Today’s guest is my friend and former colleague Elysha Krupp, the U.K fine living and lifestyle editor at AskMen.com. As the world’s largest men’s lifestyle website in the world, AskMen.com has more than 14 million monthly readers in the U.S alone. Elysha focuses on travel and food, loves to eat herself silly and compensates with fitness. Today we dig into exactly what it takes to excite the team who speaks to and serves the largest online male audience in the world.

About the AskMen.com platform

• Started about ten years ago with a real focus on SEO (search engine optimization). Today a lot of their traffic comes through search engines like Google.
• Offices in London (which is where Elysha is based) Sydney Australia and Montreal Canada where the headquarters is located.

• Covers everything from fitness, dating, sports, news and anything else under the sun that could possibly spark a man’s interest.
• Incredibly diverse with thousands and thousands of articles on every different type of lifestyle sector.
• The kinds of stories they cover: About 80% are features and 20% are straight news. In terms of news what they cover is anything related to men’s interests.
• The best way to get noticed as an expert: Pitch something that is concise and to the point. Do the research and make sure what you’re pitching makes sense for them. Ideally it would be something that they are already covering

Pitches that get deleted right away: They get a lot of pitches where it seems like whoever the PR person is hasn’t even been on the website. They receive pitches about things like kid’s toys for example. These are the kinds of things that will be deleted right away.

Getting set up as a contributor: If you’re willing to write a full feature that is always greatly appreciated and the easiest way to get on board. If you’re a small business owner and there’s a decent writer in your company that helps a lot. If it works out for you to become a contributor they can set you up with an author bio and you can become a regular contributor.

Elysha clicks on emails that:

• Get to the point quickly
• Aren’t  long and wordy
• Are relevant to something happening locally or in the world
• Timing and relevance are the biggest factors for her

Pro tip: One of the best ways to figure out a why now to hook your message onto is to Google awareness days or hallmark holidays. Put either of these two things in quotes and put them in Google. There’s an awareness day for everything.

Lead time at AskMen.com:  Traditional magazines have an estimated three month turn around, but since AskMen is online their turn around is much quicker. It can be as quick as the day of but if you want the best chance a week is generally ideal

Sections open to pitches:  The career and dating sections are always open to pitches because there’s an endless amount of options there.  A fresh angle is the biggest piece of advice. Come up with something that is going to provide something new for the readers.

• Pitching something to Elysha: Think about a creative angle. Don’t just come to her with a product you’re trying to sell but with an actual story. The less work she has to do for you the easier it will be to get coverage. If you come with an already prepared full angle and story then it will make her life easier and she will be more willing to run it.
• Elysha’s advise for getting out of the baby pool and into the ocean: If you won’t read something your readers probably won’t either. If you wouldn’t accept your pitch then don’t pitch it. If you’re not interested in it why would a reader be? You are ultimately your first reader and you are ultimately your first client.
• Contacting Elysha with a pitch: Email her at elysha@AskMen.com
• You can also find Elysha on twitter at: @ElyshaKrupp