Write for Us: Tips, Data, and Sponsorship

guptadeepak.com does not publish free guest posts. I closed unsolicited guest contributions in July 2026 after the pitch volume passed the point where reading them was a part-time job. Almost all of it was link acquisition wearing a byline.

The page stayed up because the intent behind it is real. People do have things worth sending me. So here is what I take now, what I pay attention to, and what it costs, which for three of the four routes is nothing.

Why I closed guest posts

Three reasons, in order of weight.

The economics stopped working. Editing an outside draft to the standard of this site takes longer than writing the piece myself. That was true when the drafts were human. It is more true now that most of them arrive generated.

The incentive was never the reader. Nearly every pitch I received wanted one thing: a dofollow link. The article was the delivery mechanism. You can tell because the pitch changes topic instantly when you say the link will carry rel="nofollow".

Attribution now matters more than volume. AI engines cite sources they can attribute to a person with a track record. A site that publishes anyone dilutes exactly the signal that makes it worth citing. I wrote about that trade in what publishers get wrong about blocking Google.

What I accept

1. News tips and corrections

The most useful thing you can send me. Breaches and incidents before they are widely covered, a vendor quietly changing pricing or deprecating a feature, a regulator ruling that has not been picked up, or an error in something I have already published.

Corrections get priority over everything else on this page. If I got a number, a date, or a vendor detail wrong, tell me and I will fix it and note the change. No pitch needed, no relationship required.

Tips can be anonymous. I do not publish sender identity, and I do not need your company's permission to fix my own facts. If a tip turns into coverage, I will credit you by name only if you ask for it.

2. Original data and co-research

This is the only route that still ends in a byline.

The bar is primary data. Something you collected, measured, or ran, that does not exist anywhere else, with a methodology you are willing to publish alongside the finding. Survey results with the sample and instrument disclosed. A benchmark with the harness. A teardown of a corpus you built. The kind of thing my own GEO market research and citation measurement study are made of.

What that is not: a roundup, an explainer, a listicle, or a case study about your own product. If a language model could produce a competent version of it from memory, it does not clear the bar, and that is the same test I apply to my own drafts.

Co-authored work carries both names, a real author bio, and a link to your profile. I edit for accuracy and voice. You review before it ships.

3. Product and vendor updates

I maintain directories that go stale without help from the people who build the products in them: Identity Map for identity vendors, CIAM Compass for customer identity, GEO Compass for generative engine optimization tooling, Tools for comparisons, and Tech Graveyard for the things that died.

Send launches, pricing changes, deprecations, acquisitions, sunset dates, and SDK or standard support changes. Facts with a source I can check.

Two things to be clear about. Sending an update does not buy coverage, and it does not buy a favorable entry. If your pricing change makes a comparison read worse for you, the comparison still changes. The reason vendors send these anyway is that a wrong entry hurts more than an unflattering correct one.

4. Sponsorship and paid placement

Rates on request. Email with [SPONSOR] in the subject and what you have in mind.

This site is fourteen properties, an image pipeline, an R2 bucket, a research process, and the people who keep all of it current. None of that is free, and none of it is funded by a media company. Sponsorship exists so the infrastructure and the time behind it are paid for by something other than link deals.

What is available: underwriting a research project or a data study, placement in the newsletter, and sponsored deep dives that I research and write with your team as the subject-matter source.

The rules, all of which are non-negotiable:

• Every sponsored placement is labeled as sponsored, on the page, above the content, not in a footer.
• Every sponsor link carries rel="sponsored". If you need a dofollow editorial link, this is not the product, and no amount of money makes it the product.
• Paying never changes a ranking, a score, or a verdict in any directory or comparison on this site. If it did, the directories would be worthless to the buyers who use them, and then they would be worthless to you.
• You get a factual accuracy review before publication. You do not get editorial control, and you do not get to remove criticism of your category or your product.
• Nothing gets inserted into existing published posts. Not links, not mentions, not paragraphs.
• I decline sponsors whose product I would not recommend to a reader, and I have.

What I never accept

• Paid link insertion into existing articles, at any price, from any budget.
• Undisclosed paid links or unlabeled sponsored content.
• Link exchanges, three-way link schemes, and "we will place yours on our DR70 site" offers.
• Generated drafts submitted as original work.
• Press releases reformatted as articles.
• Crypto, gambling, essay mills, and anything that needs a disclaimer to be legal.
• Content whose only purpose is to rank for a keyword its author does not care about.

How to reach me

One address, four subject tags. The tag decides how fast it gets read, so use it.

Subject tag	Use it for	Typical response
[TIP]	Breaking incidents, vendor changes, corrections to a live post	Within 48 hours if actionable
[DATA]	Original research or a co-authored study proposal	Within a week
[UPDATE]	Launches, pricing, deprecations, sunset dates for the directories	Logged, replied to only if I need detail
[SPONSOR]	Sponsorship, underwriting, newsletter placement	Two business days

Email: hello@guptadeepak.com. Anything sent without a tag lands in the same queue as the guest-post pitches, which is to say it is read last and usually not at all.

If you were about to pitch a guest post anyway, read the four routes again first. One of them probably fits what you actually want, and it will get an answer.

FAQ

Do you accept guest posts on guptadeepak.com?

No. Unsolicited guest posts closed in July 2026. The only route to a byline is original data or co-authored research, where you bring primary data and a methodology that can be published alongside the finding.

Do you sell links?

No. Sponsored placements carry rel="sponsored" and a visible sponsored label, and nothing is ever inserted into an existing published article. Requests to buy a dofollow editorial link, insert a link into an old post, or swap links are declined without exception.

Does it cost anything to send a tip or a product update?

No. Tips, corrections, and vendor updates are free and always will be. They are the most useful thing anyone sends this site. Sponsorship is a separate route and buys no editorial outcome.

What does sponsorship include, and what does it cost?

Underwriting a research project or data study, newsletter placement, or a sponsored deep dive researched and written in-house with your team as the source. Every placement is labeled and every link is rel="sponsored". Rates depend on scope, so email hello@guptadeepak.com with [SPONSOR] in the subject.

Can paying improve our position in your vendor directories?

No. Rankings, scores, and verdicts in Identity Map, CIAM Compass, GEO Compass, and every comparison on this site are set by published methodology and never by spend. A directory that could be bought would be useless to the buyers who read it, which would make it useless to sponsors too.

I sent a correction. Will you actually fix it?

Yes, and corrections outrank everything else in the inbox. Send the wrong claim, the correct one, and a source. Substantive fixes are noted on the page so the change is visible rather than silent.