Write for us — life insurance
This page is for the wider category: what a policy actually is, what it does after it is issued, and what happens when somebody claims on it.
Our other contributor pages cover the machinery — underwriting mechanism, the no-exam products, the clinical side. This one covers everything downstream of the decision: contract mechanics, planning, beneficiaries, tax, group benefits, and claims.
It is also the page where the writing on the open web is at its worst, because it is the page with the most affiliate money behind it.
Who we publish
Certified financial planners and fee-only advisers who can explain where life insurance fits in a plan, and where it does not.
Estate planning attorneys on trusts, ownership structures, beneficiary designations and what goes wrong when they conflict with a will.
Claims professionals — the people who investigate, approve and deny. Almost nothing accurate is written about this and you are the reason.
Employee benefits specialists on group cover, portability, conversion rights and what employees systematically misunderstand about the policy they already have.
Tax professionals on the tax treatment of proceeds, cash value, transfers, and the transfer-for-value trap.
Consumer advocates and plaintiff-side attorneys handling denials, rescissions and contestability disputes.
Policyholders with a story that generalises. Rare, but a well-documented account of a claim that went wrong teaches more than an explainer does.
If you are none of those but have a genuinely researched piece with primary sources, pitch it anyway. The bar is the sourcing, not the job title.
What we are looking for
Pieces that answer a question the internet currently answers badly or dishonestly.
- What the contestability period does in practice, and what actually triggers an investigation
- Beneficiary designations: per stirpes versus per capita, minors, ex-spouses, and the failure modes of each
- Conversion rights on term policies — the deadline, the mechanics, and where people lose them
- Cash value honestly assessed, including the first-decade returns that illustrations skate over
- How policy loans work, and how a policy lapses with a loan outstanding
- Group cover: what portability actually gives you and what it costs on the way out
- Accelerated death benefit riders, and what triggers them
- Life settlements — the regulated version, the tax consequences, the Medicaid interaction
- Estate tax and ILITs, including the three-year rule
- What happens to a policy in divorce, bankruptcy, or a business buy-sell
- Reading an illustration: which columns are guaranteed and which are not
- Why a claim gets denied, ranked by actual frequency rather than by anecdote
Roughly 1,200–2,000 words. Longer if the length is earning its place.
What we reject, every time
Affiliate content in editorial clothing. "Best life insurance companies of 2026" and every variant. This is the single largest category of pitch we receive and it is an automatic no.
Quote-widget bait. Pieces built to funnel readers to a comparison form.
Fear-first framing. "What happens to your family if you die tomorrow" openers. We explain how things work; we do not sell through anxiety.
Rate figures with no traceable source. If you state a premium, tell us the carrier, the age, the health class and the face amount, or leave it out.
Advice. We publish how things work. We do not tell an individual reader what to buy, and we do not publish pieces that do. Where a piece necessarily touches on suitability, it says "this depends on X and here is how to think about X" rather than "you should".
Unlabelled AI output. Our AI content policy covers how we use these tools ourselves. Model-generated prose presented as professional judgement, or invented citations, is an automatic and permanent rejection.
Credentials and review
Pieces from licensed professionals carry the credential in the byline, and we will ask to verify it privately. Where a piece touches on tax or legal consequences it carries a standing note that it is general information rather than advice for the reader's situation.
We may ask you to distinguish between what the law or contract says and what you have seen happen in practice. Both are publishable. They just get labelled differently, and readers making a financial decision deserve to know which is which.
Links and disclosure
Citations to statute, regulation, court decisions, carrier contracts and research are dofollow and are the main thing that gets a piece accepted.
Links to your own firm, practice, product or service are marked rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow", without exception and regardless of any commercial arrangement. That is Google's requirement and our policy, and it is not negotiable.
Any piece where the author has a commercial interest in the subject carries a disclosure line naming that interest. For advisers, that includes commission-based compensation on the products discussed.
Placement options and turnaround
Editorial contributions from practitioners are free — if your piece is accepted on merit, you pay nothing, ever. The options below are for businesses that want a commercial placement, which is a different thing and is labelled as such on the page.
| Placement | What you get | Review | Turnaround |
|---|---|---|---|
| Editorial contribution | Full article, byline with credentials, dofollow citations to sources | Full editorial review, may be rejected | 2–3 weeks |
| Link insertion | One contextual link added to an existing relevant article | Relevance check | 3–5 days |
| Sponsored article | Article published with a sponsored label and disclosure line | Accuracy and compliance review | 5–7 days |
| Sponsored feature | Sponsored article plus placement in the related-links block on matching product pages | Accuracy and compliance review | 7–10 days |
Every commercial placement carries a visible sponsored label, a disclosure line and rel="sponsored" on commercial links. That applies at every tier and is not something a fee changes. We do not run sponsored content that makes a suitability claim about a product.
Rates for the commercial tiers on request through the contact page.
Topics we would commission tomorrow
- What a contestability investigation actually involves, from someone who has run them
- The beneficiary designation mistakes that generate the most litigation
- Term conversion: the deadline, the mechanics, and the money left on the table
- Reading a whole life illustration — guaranteed columns versus everything else
- How a policy loan quietly lapses a policy, with the arithmetic
- Group life portability priced against an individual policy for the same person
- The transfer-for-value rule explained for people who are about to trip over it
- Accelerated death benefit riders: what triggers them and what they cost
- Life settlements — when the maths works and when it does not
- ILITs and the three-year rule, in plain language
- What happens to life insurance in a divorce decree, and how those obligations get enforced
- Claim denials ranked by actual frequency, with what each one could have been prevented by
How to pitch
Send the pitch, not the finished article. One paragraph on the argument, one on why you are the person to make it, and the sources you intend to use.
Use the contact page with "Life insurance guest post pitch" in the subject.
We reply to pitches we want. If you have not heard back in two weeks it was not a fit — please pitch something else rather than following up on the same idea.
Questions we get asked
Which of your four write-for-us pages should I use? By subject. Underwriting mechanism, claims investigation, regulation and impaired-risk placement go to insurance. Accelerated, simplified and guaranteed issue products go to no-exam. Clinical explanation of a condition goes to health. Policy mechanics, planning, tax, beneficiaries and group benefits go here. If it straddles two, pick either and we will move it if needed.
Do you pay contributors? No, and you pay nothing either. Editorial contributions are unpaid on both sides. What you get is a byline on a site that will not publish anything it cannot source.
I am a licensed agent. Can I contribute? Yes, with a disclosure line about how you are compensated, and on the condition that the piece is not about your agency. Agents who explain mechanism well are useful writers. Agents who write brochures are not.
Will my links be dofollow? Citations to statute, filings, contracts and research are dofollow. Links to your own commercial entity are rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow" in every case, including editorial contributions.
Can I write about a specific carrier's product? Only if you are explaining how a mechanism works and the carrier is the example, not the point. A piece that compares one carrier favourably to others is a commercial placement, and it gets labelled as one.
How much editing will you do? Enough to matter. We cut promotional language, ask for sources on unsourced claims, and tighten structure. We do not change your argument, and you see the edited version before it publishes.
Can I update my article later? Yes. Tax thresholds move, regulations change, and we would rather a piece stayed accurate. Send the update and we will date the revision on the page.
Do you accept AI-assisted drafts? On the same terms we hold ourselves to in our AI content policy. A model can help you write; it cannot be the source of a factual claim. We check citations, and fabricated references end the relationship.