Help! We're Losing All Our Writers to Fame and Fortune

Before I get started, here's the shortcut:

If you want to get paid to write articles for Cracked, go here and follow the instructions.

If you have any problems or get confused, read down to the bottom of this article for further instructions. But otherwise it's pretty easy. If you don't feel like writing, but have a fascinating story or life experience you'd like us to cover on the site, reply to this thread instead. Yep, you can get paid just for telling us your story.

Now, every time we do one of these "Please write for us!!!" posts, some people get suspicious. "Why are you constantly posting on the front page begging people to write for you, Cracked? Is it because you're running some kind of scam? It's a scam, isn't it? Tell us how you're exploiting the Internet's aspiring writers, you assholes! Are you luring them to a hotel and then stealing their kidneys?"

It's not a scam: You can ask any Cracked writer how it works (click their byline and send them a message, they like to hear from you!) or if you sign up you'll find yourself in the Comedy Workshop (just a fancy name for the private message board where our aspiring writers hang out and submit article ideas) where you can just openly ask other writers how it works. There's no mystery here. It's just a website, not a cult.

"So if it's so great, why are you constantly having to beg for more writers?"

Well, here's where I have to come clean. Yes, Cracked talent doesn't hang around very long. There is a reason for it, and quite frankly I don't like to talk about it. But ...

Let me tell you the cautionary tale of an innocent, bright young teenager named Shelby Fero. She saw one of these "Write for Us!!!" posts a few years ago, and signed up. She wrote this article in 2010 -- her first published work -- and got three million hits.

Three years, a shitload of Twitter followers, and several comedy writing jobs later, here she is acting in an episode of Comedy Central's Key & Peele (that's her playing "Denise"):

And now she writes for the FX show Chozen. You know, the animated show that runs after the biggest hit on their network, Archer? She's written lines to be spoken by fucking Method Man, and Alan Tudyk (and is now on the writing staff of Comedy Central's @midnight).

Another young lady named Noel Wells got a job with us in 2011, on the video side. You might have seen her doing a Lena Dunham impression in one of our videos.

Or, a couple of years later, maybe you saw her doing her Lena Dunham impression as a full-time cast member of Saturday Night Live, alongside Tina Fey ...

... after that show stole her away from us last year.

Not that this was an isolated incident. In fact, it appears that SNL has built its entire new cast from Cracked alums. Let us just quote their own announcement:

"Please join us in welcoming our newest cast members: Beck Bennett, John Milhiser, Kyle Mooney, Mike O'Brien, Noel Wells & Brooks Wheelan!!"

Beck Bennett? Kyle Mooney? Why, those would be members of the sketch group Good Neighbor, as seen right here on fucking Cracked in 2010. John Milhiser? Here he is on Cracked, motherfucker, circa 2011.

Hey, did you enjoy this song about teenage sex Rachel Bloom did for us in 2012? Then we're sure you'll also like her upcoming series on Showtime. What about that series we ran in 2011 called Next Time on Lonny? Whatever happened to those guys? Oh, right, they got a production deal with Comedy Central, with Ben fucking Stiller as executive producer.

And while we're at it, what happened to BriTANick, the wonderful duo who made some of Cracked's most classic videos, like this one? They had to settle for a movie deal with Lionsgate.

So you see, it's kind of hard for us to keep people.

"But Cracked, those are all fancy acting types!" you might say. "I aspire only to write articles!" Well, if you weren't inspired enough by Shelby up there, then all I can offer you is book deals. Cracked's enormously popular Jacopo della Quercia? He replied to one of these "Write for us!" posts in 2009. Now he has a book deal with St. Martin's Press (coming in August!).

Kathy Benjamin also signed up in 2009, book deal in 2013. Asher Cantrell was in your exact position in 2010, reading a post just like this one, and got a book deal three years later. And don't forget Gladstone, whose book comes out in March.

And that's not even mentioning our own Dan O'Brien, whose book comes out in a couple of months. Or mine. But even if you don't get your own book deal, your work may merely wind up in one of our books, so that would be another way to see your name on the bestseller list.

Wait, I'm still not fucking done. After all, where do you think the Cracked full-time staff come from? Full-time editors Kristi Harrison, Adam Brown, Robert Brockway, and Robert Evans were all once just regular folk like you, who replied to a "Write for Cracked!" post just like this one, back in 2007. Each worked their way up to salaried positions writing boner jokes full-time (and what also happened to Brockway in 2010? Book deal! ). Editors Cyriaque Lamar and Tom Reimann showed up in 2008, that same year a young Cody Johnston came to post his YouTube videos on our forum. All now list "full-time comedy making person" on their tax return.

I can't guarantee you those results. Hell, there might be better, faster paths to writing success in the world. But if there are, I don't know of them. We require no prior experience and no resume -- you can start pitching us articles 30 seconds from now, and in a few weeks your work could be getting read by a million people. I can't guarantee you have a future on Saturday Night Live or the New York Times bestseller list, but I can guarantee you'll get the same shot everybody else gets. Every pitch gets the exact same amount of attention, every writer goes through the exact same process. Everyone can get feedback, everyone has access to the editors.

It all starts by clicking here and following the instructions. It's nothing complicated, there's no commitment or fucking entry fee or anything like that. If you click that link, you'll be greeted by a big yellow banner like this:

... with a blue button that says "Go to Writer's Workshop." If you don't see that button, something is broken. Once you click that, you should be taken to the Cracked Comedy Workshop (again, that's just what we call the message board where contributors hang out and submit ideas). It should look like this:

See how the first link says "All of Your Questions Answered Here"? If you're smart, you'll click that first. That'll tell you how to submit pitches and what we're looking for, etc. You'll be on your way. For your first accepted feature article, we pay $100. As of your fifth accepted article, the rate goes to $200. If your article is among the most popular of the month, you get a $100 bonus. And you get literally the largest audience possible. We are the biggest comedy website on the Internet. There are sites where it's easier to get accepted, but there are none that can get you in front of a larger audience.

Here's the link, one last time. If you're creating an account for the first time and don't see the verification email, PLEASE CHECK YOUR SPAM FOLDER. Gmail in particular is big on calling our messages spam, even though you specifically requested them. If you've tried everything and are still having technical problems creating an account or whatever, you can email tech support.

Thank you, and good luck. Let's create something great together.

-DW