These are tips for publishers in the Yardbarker Network. Please see the YBN Tips Table of Contents for a directory.

What can I do to make my emails to Pitch@yardbarker.com the most effective?
The editors at Pitch receive hundreds of emails per week. Put yourself in our shoes and imagine what would be effective in getting you to notice and choose an article out of hundreds. Here are some tips:

1) Identify the topic of your article in the subject line of the email. Subject lines like "Here's a link" or "Please promote" are not helpful and will often cause your email to get lost if we're looking for something on a particular topic.

2) Send the YB version of your link instead of the link to your site. Because of the way our system is set up, our editors need the YB version of a link in order to feature it on the YB homepage or FOXSports. If you send the link to your site, our editors will then need to search for your YB link -- we can do this, but if you've already dug up your YB link, it will make us more likely to use your link, especially when we're busy or we have YB links from other sites handy. (Please see the section on finding your YB links if you don't know how to find these.)

3) If there's a reason your article is a particularly good fit for us, feel free to explain in a sentence or two. A lot of times this won't be necessary at all if your subject line is straightforward, but in some cases you might want to explain why your article is different from the common take or is particularly relevant at this moment.

4) Feel free to skip the niceties. We appreciate the greetings, but any extraneous text you include may take away from attention on your actual article topic when our busy editors are looking through emails.

5) Send only your best articles that you think are a good fit for us to promote. Depending on how many articles you write and what kinds of topics you cover, you might be sending a few emails per month or up to several emails per day. But if you send us tons of emails with articles that are not a good fit or that already appear on our YB homepage, our editors may learn to ignore all your emails over time.

6) Do not send articles more than once. Although we don't respond to Pitch emails, we do read them. Sending articles more than once will not help your chances of getting chosen and our editors may learn to ignore your emails if they are often duplicates. If you work with other people on your site, please CC them or coordinate with them so that multiple people are not pitching the same links.

7) Address all of your emails to Pitch@yardbarker.com, not any other email address. The Pitch address forwards directly to everyone on our editorial staff. You may have talked to certain individual editors in the past but sending a message personally to one editor will only cause extra work and a delay as that editor will have to forward your email to Pitch.

What's an example of an effective Pitch email?

To: Pitch@yardbarker.com
Subject: Serena Williams wants to be a rapper

My article includes a pic of Serena in the booth:

http://network.yardbarker.com/tennis/article_external/serena_williams_rapping/4626057

I have a great article that should be featured on the widget or page for Sport X, Team X, or Player X. Should I send this to Pitch@yardbarker.com?
No. The editors at Pitch do not editorially control the sport/team/player pages or widgets. Unfortunately there is nothing the editors at Pitch can do to get your content to appear on the team, sport, or player pages or widgets. Please check out the section on automated promotion for more information.

Why has no one responded to my email to Pitch?
Due to the volume of emails we receive at Pitch, we generally do not respond to them.

Why is YB being so darn demanding about the Pitch process?
This process is totally optional -- no one needs to pitch articles if they don't want to. All YBN sites are eligible for promotion in automated areas such as the sport/team/player pages on YB, the YBN widgets, and the team pages on FOXSports (please see our section on automated promotion for details). Editorial promotion beyond these automated areas is a privilege. Following our tips for effective pitching is a way to increase your chances of receiving this additional promotion.

-Alana