Average readers per article, within 30 days
Verifiable in real time on our public Google Analytics 4 dashboard — every contributor gets the link on acceptance.
Vol. XV · Independent · Brooklyn / Berlin · Est. 2009
Issue No. 211 · Contributors Edition
FEATURED · QUEER CULTURE
Write the queer internet. 4,800 contributors already do.
Your draft, edited by a real human, published to 1.2 million readers a month — without a paywall, without corporate editing, and without anyone asking you to soften the sentence. This is the contributor page for GayBloggers, the independent queer publishing network that's been running since March 2009.
BY THE NUMBERS
Filed under: Reach & Retention · Verified via the public analytics dashboard
What publishing here actually looks like.
Skepticism is healthy — every freelance writer should ask what an outlet does with their work. Here are the four numbers we publish openly on our analytics dashboard, and what they mean for a contributor pitching a first piece today.
Newsletter retention, 36-month average
Our weekly newsletter reaches 1.1M inboxes and has held a 92% retention rate year-over-year since 2021.
Original articles in the searchable archive
Every piece since June 2009 is permanently indexed and citable — your byline lives in the historical record, not a content farm.
Active contributors across 14 verticals
The largest open-submission queer publishing network in North America — peer-edited by 380 volunteer section editors.
Source: GayBloggers public analytics dashboard, January 2026 snapshot. See how a story moves through the network ↓
DEPARTMENTS
14 verticals · Pick the desk that fits the work you want to make
14 departments. Pick yours.
GayBloggers is organized like a print magazine: each vertical is a department with its own volunteer section editor, its own pitch inbox, and its own readership. You can write into one or several — most of our contributors settle into two or three within their first year.
Trans Rights
Reporting, essays, and legal analysis on trans lives in the U.S., U.K., and Germany. Edited by section lead Jules Okafor.
Drag Culture
Performance criticism, nightlife reporting, and the politics of the stage.
Queer Parenting
First-person essays, fertility journeys, and the school-board meetings no one else covers.
LGBTQ+ Tech
Founders, investors, queer apps, labor, and the internet infrastructure queer life runs on.
Politics & Policy
Legislative tracking, court reporting, and on-the-ground pieces from statehouses.
Health & Science
Research explainers, lived-experience medicine, and the queer clinician pipeline.
- 03 Queer Film & TV
- 05 Books & Lit
- 06 International
- 08 Sports & Outgames
- 10 Religion & Faith
- 12 History & Archive
- 13 Youth & Campus
- 14 Sex & Intimacy
THE WORKFLOW
From pitch to inbox of 1.1M readers · Average 11 days
How a story gets from your draft to 18,400 readers.
There's no algorithmic queue and no freelance platform holding your work hostage. Here's the entire editorial chain, start to finish, in four chapters — exactly the same chain every contributor goes through, whether they're filing their first op-ed or their hundredth investigation.
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Ch. 01
Pitch through the open form
Send a 150-word pitch or a finished draft through the contributor application on this page. You choose your vertical at submission; pitches are routed automatically to the right section editor — no editorial gatekeeping from the masthead.
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Ch. 02
Matched with one of 380 volunteer section editors
A working queer journalist in your vertical reads your piece line by line. They suggest cuts, fact-checks claims, and signs off on the headline. Editors are volunteers — they do this because they believe in the network, and it shows in the editing.
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Ch. 03
Published to the network — no paywall, no editing mandate
Your piece goes live under your byline with the editorial tags of your vertical. It enters the permanent, searchable 187,000-article archive — fully citable, never deleted, never quietly revised. You keep the copyright.
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Ch. 04
Newsletter amplification & syndication
Featured pieces go into the weekly Sunday newsletter to 1.1M subscribers. Strong reporting is picked up by our press partners at The Guardian, NPR, Slate, and Vox — we've been cited as a primary source 240+ times since 2015.
FROM THE WRITERS
Three contributors, three verticals, one network
From the writers.
"I sent in a 600-word pitch about a trans clinic closure in my county expecting to hear back in six weeks. My editor replied in a day, fact-checked my sources with me over three phone calls, and the piece ran on the front page the following Tuesday. That piece now sits at the top of my portfolio."
"I write the kind of slow, personal parenting essay that no algorithm wants to surface and no magazine wants to commission. GayBloggers is the only place that has ever run my work at length, edited it like a real human cared, and put it in front of readers who actually reply to my newsletter."
"Drag criticism is treated like a press release everywhere else. Here, my editor pushed back on a paragraph I was too polite to write, and the piece ended up twice as good. That's what joining a working network of actual queer editors gets you — work that holds up."
CONTRIBUTOR APPLICATION · OPEN ROLES
Apply to Contribute.
Six fields. The vertical you want to write for, a pitch or two, and links to anything you've already published — even a Substack, even a Tumblr, even a Google Doc. We read every application within 48 hours.