Notes and Guidelines from Jules:
What We Publish and Standards We Keep
Welcome to The Austin Alchemist. Below you will find our advertising guidelines and publishing standards. These have been developed over time to keep pace with current industry standards and protect a small media ecosystem that includes our readers, advertisers, search presence, newsletter, feeds, professional standing, and The Austin Alchemist itself.
While we are not formally organized as a nonprofit, we operate very much in that spirit. The Austin Alchemist is my little-but-mighty ministry to Austin’s Awakening Community, and its purpose has always been to help good people, meaningful work, and worthwhile events find the people who are looking for them within the body-mind-spirit-holistic-green-conscious-living spaces.
Every week, we publish articles, directory listings, event listings, and advertising to our website and calendars. That content may also appear in our Thursday newsletter, on our Facebook page, through RSS and other feeds, and on outside calendars and news sources that pick up our listings. (Sometimes our newsletter goes out on Fridays.)
Thousands of readers encounter our content each month, both on and beyond our website, and many return regularly because they have come to rely on The Austin Alchemist as a trusted source of local community news.
I have worked professionally at the intersection of content publishing, digital marketing, social media, and online community for many years, with large and specialized clients. I bring that same experience to the work I do here for our wonderful Awakening Community. TAA advertisers receive far more than just some space on a webpage: every placement is thoughtfully prepared for our audience, our platforms, and the way people actually discover information online, and yet also crafted and handled differently–with a spirit and energy our awakened community appreciates.
Ordering
Orders are processed on a first-paid, first-served basis during regular business days.
Orders submitted over weekends or holidays are generally reviewed within two regular business days, Monday through Friday, and may not be seen before then.
The Austin Alchemist is not an instant-placement advertising service. Your information is not simply copied, pasted, and distributed automatically.
Each listing is built individually. I use automation where it makes sense to keep our overhead and advertising costs low, but every placement still requires hands-on editorial work, formatting, optimization, backend setup, and distribution across multiple channels.
A typical listing takes approximately 1–3 hours to complete. Our flat-rate pricing means that whether your listing requires one hour or three, you are not billed for the additional time it takes to prepare it properly.
Because I am serving multiple members of the community at any given time, all work is queued and scheduled.
Please allow a minimum of 10 business days for your order to be completed. In most cases, 2–3 weeks of lead time is strongly preferred, and more notice is always appreciated.
Turnaround may be longer during periods of high order volume, holidays, severe weather, or especially busy seasonal periods. This is particularly true around the solstices and equinoxes, when community event activity increases significantly.
I am one person, and I manage the workload carefully so I can provide thoughtful, consistent service to everyone. Last-minute orders may occasionally be accommodated, but only at my discretion and as time permits.
Editorial and Publishing Standards
All advertising and listings are subject to approval.
The Austin Alchemist uses current digital publishing, SEO, AEO, and social media practices to help community content remain useful, discoverable, and readable across platforms.
That means your listing is not simply text placed on a page. Titles, descriptions, formatting, links, images, metadata, and promotional copy may all be adjusted as needed to improve clarity, search visibility, readability, platform compatibility, and consistency with The Austin Alchemist’s editorial standards.
Titles are especially important and may be edited for clarity, searchability, or publication needs.
We also reserve the right to edit language that makes unsupported medical claims, creates legal or platform concerns, conflicts with our advertising guidelines, or does not fit the tone and standards of the publication.
The goal is never to change the heart of your message. It is to help your work reach the community clearly, responsibly, and in a way that works across the many digital layers where The Austin Alchemist publishes.
Guidelines for Images
Every listing published by The Austin Alchemist includes an image.
For Directory Listings and Want Ads, you must provide an appropriate image with your order. For event listings, you are welcome to provide your own image, or we may select an appropriate concept image from our library when needed.
All images are used at our editorial discretion and must meet our publishing and licensing requirements.
What Works Best
Whenever possible, send a clear photograph of yourself, your business or venue, your class, or another image that genuinely represents your offering.
Images for directory and event listings should:
- Be square or portrait in orientation
- Be at least 300 x 300 pixels; 500 x 500 pixels or larger is preferred
- Be clear and sharp
- Contain little or no text
- Remain understandable when displayed as a small thumbnail
- Be submitted as JPG, PNG, or GIF files
Landscape images, blurry or undersized images, and complicated composites do not display well across our website, newsletter, search results, and social platforms and may not be used. Graphics containing large amounts of text violate most best practices and will not be used. Best practices and standards have been developed across the internet to help protect users from harm and improve customer experiences. We want to avoid behaviors that are commonly used by websites with nefarious intent, and our policies reflect that.
Please Do Not Send Flyers
Flyers, handouts, PDFs, Word documents, and images of flyers are not accepted as listing images, orders, or otherwise.
If you have an event flyer, you may host it on your own website and provide us with a direct link where appropriate. The Austin Alchemist does not host advertiser flyers.
Our job is to help people discover your offering or event and then send interested readers to you for more details.
Image Rights and Licensing
You must own the rights to any image or artwork you submit, or have permission that allows The Austin Alchemist to use it for publication and promotion.
By submitting an image, you grant The Austin Alchemist permission to use that image in connection with your listing and its promotion across our publishing channels.
Please do not submit artwork, stock photography, or other images downloaded or copied from the internet unless you can demonstrate that you created the work or hold appropriate rights allowing us to use it.
If an image does not meet our technical or licensing requirements, we may substitute an image from our own licensed collection.
Banner and Sidebar Advertising
Banner and sidebar graphics must remain clear and legible at both website and newsletter sizes.
Keep text minimal, use easily readable fonts, and make sure you hold the appropriate rights to all graphics included in the design.
Remember: the purpose of a display ad is not to reproduce your entire website. It is to catch the reader’s attention and help interested people find you.
Advertising Guidelines
The Austin Alchemist accepts new advertising orders through our submission forms.
All submissions are subject to editorial approval and must be appropriate for our readership, publication standards, and the Body-Mind-Spirit, holistic, green, spiritual, or metaphysical communities we serve.
Local Coverage
The Austin Alchemist is a Central Texas community publication.
Advertisers must live, work, practice, or host an upcoming event within our general coverage area, extending from San Antonio through Austin and north toward Temple.
Traveling teachers and practitioners are welcome to advertise events taking place within Central Texas.
Virtual events offered by practitioners established within our coverage area may also be considered. Events originating entirely outside our community generally fall outside the purpose of our local event calendar.
One Clear Focus Per Listing
Each listing should have one clear primary purpose.
Event listings cover one event or one related workshop series. Multi-day workshops that form a single event may be published together. Unrelated events or offerings require separate listings.
Directory listings are optimized around one primary field and up to two additional supporting, or closely related, services.
For example, complementary services such as Reiki and massage may work naturally together in a single listing. A collection of unrelated offerings requiring substantially different audiences, categories, or search intent will require separate listings. Wedding officiation and non-profits always require their own, highly focused listing.
If you are unsure how best to structure your listing, please contact me before ordering. I am happy to help identify the clearest focus.
Event Information
Event submissions should include:
- Date and beginning/end time
- Location or online access information
- Cost
- Direct contact or registration information
- A website or other direct source for additional information
- Enough descriptive copy for readers to understand what the event actually offers
- Only one event date per event listing, unless a single weekend workshop
Please complete the submission form fully. I do not retrieve missing event information from outside links as part of a standard listing order.
Event listing must run on the site through the event. The number of weeks of publishing is counted backward from the event date.
If you need help gathering information, developing your description, or creating your promotional copy from scratch, concierge and copywriting assistance may be available separately.
Original Copy
Please provide useful, original information about your event, practice, or service rather than copying promotional text from unrelated websites or third-party sources.
We routinely copy-edit submissions for spelling, grammar, readability, and publication style. We may also adapt copy for clarity, search, social media, metadata, and the different channels through which The Austin Alchemist distributes content.
Standard advertising pricing assumes that you provide the basic information and your best source copy needed to create the listing. Extensive copywriting, research, organization, or content development falls outside the normal listing fee and may require a separate quote.
Titles
Titles matter.
The Austin Alchemist uses concise, focused titles designed to remain understandable to readers and useful across search, social, newsletter, and syndication environments.
As a house standard, listing titles should generally remain under 70 characters and focus on one primary event, service, or subject.
All titles are subject to editorial approval and may be adjusted for clarity, consistency, searchability, or publication needs.
Restricted Content
The Austin Alchemist serves an alternative and metaphysical community, but that does not mean every product, service, claim, or event is appropriate for publication.
We reserve the right to decline advertising that:
- Falls substantially outside our editorial focus
- Creates safety, legal, licensing, or platform concerns
- Makes unsupported or inappropriate medical claims
- Promotes manipulation, harm, exploitation, or non-consensual practices
- Contains sexually explicit material inappropriate for our general readership
- Promotes regulated or restricted products that we are unable or unwilling to advertise
- Could jeopardize the safety, reputation, accessibility, or technical health of The Austin Alchemist or its community
Certain medicines, supplements, ingestible products, tobacco or nicotine products, cannabinoid products, medical devices, and other regulated goods or services may not be eligible for advertising.
Policies may change as laws, technologies, distribution platforms, or publication requirements evolve.
When in doubt, please ask before placing an order.
Link / URL / Tracking Policies
To protect our readers and maintain the integrity of The Austin Alchemist website, links submitted with advertising must be direct, transparent, and easy to verify.
Allowed
- Direct links to your own website
- Direct registration or information pages associated with your business or event
- Direct URLs containing UTM parameters for your own analytics
UTM parameters are welcome as long as they do not change, disguise, or redirect the final destination.
Not Allowed
We do not publish:
- Link shorteners such as Bitly, TinyURL, or similar services
- Redirect or masking services
- Affiliate or referral links
- Links that conceal the final destination
- Unnecessary redirect chains
If you would like to track traffic from The Austin Alchemist, simply provide a direct URL containing your own UTM parameters.
Why We Use Direct Links
The Austin Alchemist serves a niche community that can already be difficult for search engines, email systems, and social platforms to classify accurately. Clean, transparent links help us maintain trust across that ecosystem.
Direct links help support:
- Reader safety
- Site integrity
- Search and platform trust
- Email deliverability
- Accessibility
- A smoother experience for readers
- Clear attribution for advertisers using their own analytics
Most importantly, readers should always be able to understand where a link will take them.
Our goal is to keep The Austin Alchemist a trusted, accessible, and welcoming resource for the Central Texas metaphysical community. These standards help protect that trust for practitioners, teachers, event hosts, advertisers, and the people who rely on us to find them.
Thank you for helping us keep our digital space clear, honest, and welcoming.
I’m ready; please take me to the event ad submission form.
I’m ready; please take me to the directory listing submission form.