Guest Post & Contributor Terms and Conditions

1 Scope and Definitions

1.1 Who these Terms apply to. These Terms apply to every individual author, content agency, SEO agency, advertiser and corporate sponsor, and to any person acting on their behalf, who pitches, submits, pays for or publishes content on aofirs.org (each a “Contributor”).
1.2 Out of scope. Display advertising, newsletter sponsorship, webinar sponsorship, directory listings and institutional partnerships are governed by the AOFIRS Media Kit 2026, unless expressly stated otherwise.
1.3  Definitions.

1.4 Order of precedence. If documents conflict, they apply in this order: (a) a separate written agreement signed by AOFIRS Management for a specific campaign; (b) these Terms; (c) the AOFIRS Guest Post & Contributor Media Kit 2026; (d) the AOFIRS Media Kit 2026; (e) the general aofirs.org Terms & Conditions; and (f) terms attached to AOFIRS invoices or payment gateways such as PayPal.

2 Editorial Independence

2.1 All published material remains under the independent editorial control of AOFIRS. A Publication Fee pays for editorial consideration, processing, publication and hosting. It does not purchase an endorsement by AOFIRS or the CIRS™ programme, nor any search ranking signal. Paid articles display the guest author’s profile.

2.2 AOFIRS is a professional association, not an advertising broker. Prices are fixed and non-negotiable, and every submission is checked against our accepted categories, content policy and Code of Ethics before it is scheduled.

3 Services and Fees

3.1 The following services are available. All prices are in US Dollars (USD).

3.2 Prices exclude PayPal transaction fees, currency-conversion charges and applicable taxes, all of which are the Contributor’s responsibility.

3.3 AOFIRS may change prices on 30 days’ notice. An invoice already issued and paid is honoured at the invoiced price.

4 Accepted and Prohibited Content

4.1 Accepted categories. Content must be genuinely useful to AOFIRS’s professional research audience and fall within one of these categories: AI and emerging technology; Internet research methodology and OSINT; investigative research; data analytics, business intelligence and the deep web; cybersecurity and digital safety; search engine news, techniques and advanced search guides; Internet technology and IoT; professional development and career growth; online education and EdTech; Internet law, ethics and privacy; business and market research; market trends and industry topics; knowledge management and information science; social and digital media; and remote work and remote research.

4.2 Topical relevance. AOFIRS declines content whose main purpose is to benefit from the standing of the aofirs.org domain rather than to serve its readers, including well-written off-topic commercial content.

4.3 Prohibited content. The following are rejected at pitch stage or removed at any time, without refund:

• CBD, cannabis or other controlled substances; unlicensed or illegal pharmaceuticals;
• cryptocurrency, token, ICO or trading-signal promotion, and any deceptive financial scheme;
• adult or sexually explicit content; dating or escort services;
• gambling, casinos, betting, sweepstakes or gaming promotions;
• essay-writing, contract-cheating or exam-answer services;
• payday, predatory or high-cost lending; multi-level marketing;
• malware, phishing, cloaked, auto-downloading or deceptive destinations;
• hate speech, harassment, defamation, or content infringing third-party rights;
• unsubstantiated health, medical, legal or financial claims, and misinformation;
• paid political advertising or partisan campaign material; and
• fake reviews, fabricated statistics, invented quotes or fabricated citations.

5 Submission and Publication

5.1 Pitch. Email support@aofirs.org with the proposed title, target category, short outline, intended anchor text, destination URL(s), and any commercial relationship with the destination. AOFIRS aims to approve or decline a pitch within 24 to 48 hours. No charge applies to a declined pitch.

5.2 Invoice and payment. On approval, AOFIRS issues a PayPal invoice payable within 5 days. Payment must clear before the article is submitted or scheduled.

5.3 Submission. Submit the completed article within 30 days of payment as a Google Doc with editing access or a Microsoft Word (.docx) file. PDF submissions are not accepted.

5.4 Review. AOFIRS aims to return editorial feedback within 48 to 72 hours. Two rounds of Contributor revisions are included in the Publication Fee.

5.5 Publication. AOFIRS aims to publish an approved article within 24 hours of approval and emails the live URL to the Contributor. Turnaround times are good-faith targets; the remedy for delay is limited to that set out in Section 11.2.

6 Content Standards

6.1 Every article must meet the following standards:

• Length: minimum 1,200 words, or 1,800+ words for in-depth analysis. Articles over 3,500 words may be split into a two-part series at AOFIRS’s discretion.
• Structure: at least three H2 or H3 subheadings, with actionable takeaways.
• Originality: 100% original, never published elsewhere in whole or in part, and exclusive to AOFIRS. All submissions are screened for plagiarism and duplication.
• Generative AI: content generated wholly or largely by AI tools, without significant original human expertise, reporting or verified analysis, is rejected. Submissions are screened with AI-content verification tools.
• Accuracy: every factual claim, statistic and citation must be independently verifiable. Primary, peer-reviewed, government and standards-body sources are preferred.
• Ethics: Contributors follow the AOFIRS Code of Ethics, including transparent data sourcing and disclosure of conflicts of interest.
• Images: at least one relevant, original JPEG or PNG image, chart or diagram of at least 1200 × 628 px, with documented usage rights or attribution.
• Author bio: no more than 100 words, including full name, title, organisation and one approved link.
• Tone: informational and educational. Promotional language, superlatives and repeated brand mentions are edited out.

7 Link Policy

7.1 Link qualification. Any link placed in exchange for payment, goods, services, a reciprocal arrangement or sponsorship carries the attribute rel="sponsored" (or rel="nofollow"). AOFIRS will not remove or alter these attributes on request. Unpaid Editorial Contributions may carry editorial links at AOFIRS’s sole discretion.

7.2 Allowance and placement. Each Guest Article includes one Commercial Link. Up to two additional links may be purchased, to a maximum of three external links per article. Links must sit naturally within relevant body copy, not in headings, image captions or keyword lists. Anchor text must be concise and descriptive; exact-match commercial anchors and anchor-text stuffing are rewritten or removed. AOFIRS may add or approve citations to authoritative, non-competing reference sources.

7.3 Destination requirements. Each destination must be a live, secure (HTTPS) page on a brand-owned domain with no more than two redirect hops; must comply with Section 4.3; must not use cloaking, forced downloads, pop-under advertising or deceptive interface elements; and must be the destination disclosed at pitch stage. Any change of destination after approval requires fresh approval.

7.4 Link Insertions. Link Insertions are available only in existing, non-sponsored aofirs.org articles. The Contributor may propose the target article, anchor text and destination URL, but AOFIRS has sole discretion to approve the insertion, refine the anchor wording and integrate it without altering the article’s original context or voice. Placement is confirmed with the Contributor before publishing, typically within 3 to 5 business days.

7.5 Ongoing monitoring. AOFIRS periodically re-checks published links and may remove, replace or further qualify any link, without refund, if its destination becomes broken, redirects to a different or low-quality page, changes ownership, receives malware or safe-browsing flags, triggers regulatory complaints, or otherwise breaches these Terms.

8 Sponsored Content Disclosure

8.1 Every Guest Post, Sponsored Post and paid Link Insertion carries a clear and prominent label identifying it as paid content, displayed at the top of the article before the body text. AOFIRS determines the label wording, and labels cannot be removed or altered at the Contributor’s request.

8.2 When AOFIRS shares a paid article on social media, the post identifies it as sponsored.

8.3 Contributors must disclose every material connection to the products, services or destinations mentioned, including where an agency writes on behalf of a client.

9 Indexing and Search Performance Disclaimer

9.1 What AOFIRS provides. AOFIRS publishes each paid article on a live, publicly accessible and stable URL; uses commercially reasonable efforts to maintain high availability (target uptime 99.8%); applies no “noindex” directive to the article page and a valid self-referencing canonical tag; includes the article in the aofirs.org XML sitemap and relevant category pages; and hosts it as set out in Section 13.

9.2 What AOFIRS does not guarantee. AOFIRS does not guarantee crawling, indexing, caching or retention by Google, Bing or any other search engine, crawler or AI system; keyword rankings, search visibility, rich results or inclusion in AI-generated answers; or organic traffic, referral traffic, backlink metrics or the transfer of any third-party metric such as Domain Authority. Indexing is left to occur organically, and AOFIRS does not manually submit Contributor URLs to search engines.

Mandatory disclaimer

Search engine indexing, caching and ranking decisions are made exclusively by third-party search engines through automated and proprietary algorithms. AOFIRS does not under any circumstances guarantee that any published article will be crawled, indexed or ranked by Google or any other search engine. Publication Fees cover editorial review, content processing, formatting and live hosting on aofirs.org. The absence or delay of indexing by any third party is not grounds for withholding payment, a chargeback or a refund.

10 Payment Terms

10.1 Prepayment. 100% of the Publication Fee must be paid and cleared before an article is staged, scheduled or published. No work is published on credit.

10.2 Payment method. Payment is accepted only through a PayPal invoice issued by AOFIRS, paid directly by the Contributor from its own business or personal PayPal account or credit or debit card. Direct bank transfers are not accepted. All amounts are charged in USD and processed through banks in Canada and the United States.

10.3 Invoice validity. Invoices are valid for 5 days from issue. An expired invoice does not reserve a publication slot, and a $5 re-invoicing fee applies to reissue it. AOFIRS may end its business relationship with any Contributor who repeatedly fails to pay issued invoices.

10.4 Fees and taxes. The Contributor bears all PayPal, bank and currency-conversion fees, and the invoiced amount must be received in full before publication. Prices exclude applicable taxes, which are shown on the invoice where they apply. The Contributor is responsible for its own withholding and local taxes.

10.5 Bulk and monthly orders. Bulk orders are prepaid in full at invoicing. Monthly commitments are billed in advance at the start of each cycle; unused article slots carry forward one cycle as Credit and then expire.

10.6 Official channels. AOFIRS issues invoices only through its official PayPal account and the official @aofirs.org email addresses listed in Section 19. AOFIRS is not responsible for payments sent to any other account.

11 Refund Policy

11.1 >General rule. All payments for Guest Posts, bulk and monthly packages, additional links, Link Insertions and Sponsored Posts are final and non-refundable once received by AOFIRS, except as stated in this Section 11. Publication Fees compensate AOFIRS for evaluation, editing, formatting, publication, infrastructure and hosting resources committed as soon as an order is accepted.

11.2 Application. The following outcomes apply:

11.3 Exceptions. Only AOFIRS Management may grant an exception, in response to a written request sent to support@aofirs.org. No editor, staff member or support representative may promise a refund without written authorisation from an authorised manager. Approved refunds are processed within 30 days and returned only via PayPal to the originating account.

11.4 Credits. Credits are non-cash, non-transferable and cannot be exchanged for money. Unless these Terms state otherwise, a Credit is valid for 30 days from the date it is issued and may be applied once to an AOFIRS contributor service of equal or greater value, with the Contributor paying any difference. Unused Credits expire automatically without notice.

11.5 Statutory rights. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any right that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited under applicable consumer protection law.

12 No-Chargeback Policy and Dispute Resolution

12.1 No-chargeback commitment. The Contributor agrees not to open any PayPal dispute or claim, card chargeback, bank reversal or other payment reversal in respect of any AOFIRS contributor service. All payment concerns, including claims for a refund or Credit, are resolved exclusively under the Refund Policy in Section 11 and the dispute resolution process in Section 12.2.

12.2 Dispute resolution by mutual cooperation. Any dispute about an order, publication or payment is resolved as follows:

• Written notice. The Contributor sends a written notice to support@aofirs.org within 7 days of the invoice or publication date, stating the order details, the issue and the outcome sought.
• Response. AOFIRS acknowledges the notice and responds in writing within 5 business days.
• Cooperation. Both parties work together in good faith, for up to 30 days from the notice, to agree a resolution in accordance with the Refund Policy, such as a revision, a replacement article, a Credit or a refund approved by AOFIRS Management under Section 11.3.
• Escalation. If the matter is not resolved within that period, it is escalated to AOFIRS Management for a written decision under Section 11. Only after this process is completed may either party pursue remedies under Section 18.1.

12.3 Breach. Opening a PayPal dispute, claim or card chargeback in breach of Section 12.1, or on grounds these Terms exclude (such as non-indexing, link attributes or disclosure labels), is a material breach of these Terms.

12.4 Interim measures. While a dispute, claim or chargeback is open, AOFIRS may unpublish the article, apply a noindex directive or remove links, and may suspend the Contributor’s and the destination domain’s eligibility for future placements.

12.5 Evidence. AOFIRS retains pitch correspondence, approvals, invoices, payment records, live URLs, timestamps, archived snapshots and records of the Contributor’s acceptance of these Terms, and will provide them to the payment provider in any dispute.

12.6 Reversed payments. If a payment is reversed, the order is treated as unpaid, the content is removed, and AOFIRS may recover the reversed amount together with any processing, dispute and reasonable collection costs.

12.7 Statutory rights. This Section 12 does not limit any right that cannot lawfully be waived, as preserved by Section 11.5.

13 Hosting and Post-Publication

13.1 Hosting guarantee. AOFIRS guarantees continuous hosting of each published article URL for a minimum of twenty-four (24) months from its Live Date, except in cases of force majeure, domain decommissioning, legal takedown demands, or removal under Sections 7.5, 12 or 13.2. AOFIRS sets no expiry date on contributor content and intends articles to remain online long-term, but the 24-month period is the contractual guarantee.

13.2 Removal rights. AOFIRS may unpublish, delete or apply noindex to any article, without liability or refund, if the Contributor’s destination website changes ownership, engages in deceptive practices, receives malware flags or triggers regulatory or legal complaints, or if the article breaches these Terms.

13.3 Updates. Factual corrections requested within 30 days of the Live Date are made free of charge. Requests to change or add a link after publication are treated and priced as a Link Insertion. If AOFIRS changes an article’s URL during site maintenance, it will apply a permanent (301) redirect.

14 Intellectual Property and Licence

14.1 The Contributor retains copyright in its article and grants AOFIRS a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive licence to publish, reproduce, edit, format, archive and distribute it on aofirs.org, in AOFIRS newsletters and social channels, and in AOFIRS compilations.

14.2 Because AOFIRS requires exclusive first publication, the Contributor must not republish the article, in whole or in substantial part, elsewhere. Excerpts of up to 150 words may be shared with credit and a link to the AOFIRS original.

14.3 Publication grants no right to use the AOFIRS name, logo or CIRS™ mark, or to imply endorsement by AOFIRS. Contributors may state factually that an article was “published on aofirs.org”.

15 Contributor Warranties and Indemnity

15.1 The Contributor represents and warrants that:

• it owns or holds all rights, licences and permissions needed to submit the article and all accompanying images and data;
• the submission does not infringe any third-party intellectual property, privacy, publicity or proprietary right;
• the content is accurate to the best of its knowledge and contains no defamatory, misleading or unlawful statements;
• it has disclosed every material connection and commercial relationship relevant to the article and its links;
• where acting for a client, it has authority to bind that client to these Terms; and
• the submission and its destinations comply with all applicable laws, including advertising, consumer protection and privacy laws.

15.2 The Contributor shall indemnify, defend and hold harmless AOFIRS and its directors, officers, staff, volunteers and affiliates against all third-party claims, liabilities, damages and legal costs arising from any breach of these warranties or of these Terms.

16 Limitation of Liability

16.1 AOFIRS is not liable for decisions made by search engines, AI systems or other third parties, including algorithm updates, manual actions, de-indexing, or changes in rankings or traffic.

16.2 AOFIRS is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, including loss of profit, revenue or business opportunity.

16.3 To the fullest extent permitted by law, AOFIRS’s total liability for any claim relating to a placement is limited to the Publication Fee actually paid for that placement.

17 Privacy and Official Communications

17.1 Contact and billing information supplied by Contributors is used only to process pitches, invoices, publication and related correspondence, in line with the AOFIRS Privacy Policy at aofirs.org/privacy-policy. Author bylines and bios are published publicly.

17.2 All pitches, assets and billing communications must use the official @aofirs.org email addresses listed in Section 19. AOFIRS does not accept submissions or payment instructions through social media or messaging platforms, and will never ask a Contributor to pay any account other than its official PayPal account.

18 General Terms

18.1 Governing law. These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable there. The courts of Ontario have exclusive jurisdiction.

18.2 Amendments. AOFIRS may update these Terms on 30 days’ notice. Paid orders are governed by the version in force on the invoice date.

18.3 Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the documents listed in Section 1.4, are the entire agreement for contributor services.

18.4 Severability and waiver. If any provision is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue in full force. A failure or delay by AOFIRS in enforcing any term is not a waiver of it.

18.5 Force majeure. AOFIRS is not liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including hosting outages, cyber-attacks and acts of government.

18.6 Assignment. The Contributor may not assign its rights or obligations without AOFIRS’s prior written consent.

18.7 Notices and language. Notices are validly given by email to the addresses in Section 19 or to the Contributor’s designated email address. If these Terms are translated, the English version prevails.

19 Contact

20 Acceptance

20.1 The Contributor accepts these Terms by agreeing in the checked box in the main ordering form submitted, by submitting a pitch or article, by approving an invoice, or by paying for publication services, whichever occurs first. Acceptance confirms that the Contributor has read, understood and agreed to be bound by these Terms in their entirety.

20.2 AOFIRS may require acceptance on this page before issuing an invoice, and may rely on the acceptance record (name, organisation, email address, version of these Terms and date and time of acceptance) as evidence of the agreement, including in any payment dispute.