Have you ever seen an article on here about pre-menstrual tension? The reason I ask is that I recently received an email from someone offering me an article on that subject.

I receive quite a few of these ridiculous emails. I suppose the idea is that if someone fires off the offer to enough people, then by the laws of probability one of them might hit the right target. You know, the same way that a load of monkeys will produce the works of Shakespeare if you give them a few million years (and plenty of typewriter ribbon).

If you are serious about pitching an article to an editor, or a guest blog post to a blogger, I suggest the following tips could be useful:

• Read some articles on your intended blog or in your intended magazine. That would save us both some time.

• Write something that shows you’ve read a few articles on the blog. Today I received an email that praised my work and how my readers engage with it. Really? That’s news to me. I disabled the comments facility on my website ages ago, and hardly anyone tweets about anything I write, or emails me about my articles. Therefore that email is obviously a boilerplate email.

• Since deciding to use a Gmail address myself most of the time, I no longer look askance at emails sent from a personal Gmail address. However, at least insert a signature with your job title or other credentials, and a link to your website or writer profile.

• Finally, please make sure the email you send has been proofread. If someone can’t even spell properly or make grammatical sense in their pitch, there’s no way I’m having them on my blog!