Huffington Post Your dreams of being a Huffington Post contributor might have just died.

It’s every newbie blogger’s dream. Hell, it’s even many veteran blogger’s dreamed. Get a spot on Huffington Post. Go viral. Crash your blog with the traffic that ensues.

Just Google “how to contribute to Huffington Post,” and you’ll see article after article after article explaining “how I did it.”

A while back, Huffington Post changed the way it handled contributors, unveiling its new Athena Blogger Platform. Similar to Buzzfeed’s Community, the platform essentially allowed anyone to just create an account and start blogging.

Boom, you’re a Huffington Post contributor.

Well, sort of. See, unless your published articles get “promoted,” no one would ever see them unless you shared it elsewhere on social media or whatever. The articles certainly wouldn’t show up in Google’s search.

But hey, it still gave you the chance. And that chance went to anyone. It’s how I got started at Huffington Post (and have had two posts promoted).

And it’s what I recommended to others. In fact, I just recommended it to a buddy of mine the other day. He finally got around to signing up, but it didn’t go quite as expected. Why?

Huffington Post has officially closed registration on its contributor platform.

That’s right. He woke up all excited, having decided this was the day. He went to the signup link I forwarded him. And he was met with this message:

“Registration for the Contributor Platform is now closed. If you’ve already signed up, please click to login.”

Crash. There went his dreams (well, not exactly, he does all right elsewhere. But he would have liked a bit of exposure through the platform. After all, the majority of bloggers earn less than $3.50 a day and gives up within 100 days).

So if you got in while the getting was good, well count yourself lucky. But for the rest of you looking to become a contributor, it looks like you’re shit out of luck.