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?"

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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 ...

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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"):

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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).

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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 ...