Forbes Contributor Strategy for Founders After the 2024 and 2025 Changes

If you're chasing a Forbes contributor slot in 2026 the way the old guides told you to, you're chasing a program that no longer exists. Open applications closed in 2024. Forbes moved to invite-only / editor-led recruitment. There's no longer a public application form to fill in. And in December 2025, the program got smaller again. The short answer for founders: a contributor byline is still worth pursuing, but only if you treat it as a publishing commitment, not a credential purchase. For most founders, a Forbes Councils seat, an Entrepreneur Leadership Network seat, or a single well-placed op-ed in a tier-1 outlet will deliver more business value with less risk.

I've been ghostwriting op-eds and placing founders into Forbes, CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, Decrypt, AI Magazine and Blockworks for six years. The Forbes question comes up on almost every intro call. So let me walk you through what actually changed, what still works, and where ghostwriting is and isn't safe in the 2026 program.

What actually changed in 2024 and 2025

Three things matter. Everything else is noise.

The pageview revenue-share ended in 2024. The "$50/article + $250 monthly bonus" pay structure described in older guides is gone. Most contributors today are unpaid or on small per-piece fees negotiated case-by-case. If you read a guide that still references that pay model, throw the whole guide out. It hasn't been updated for two program overhauls.

December 2025: Forbes culled dozens of contributors. Existing contributors who weren't publishing at least two "impactful" articles per month were moved to "former contributor" status. The bar to stay on the platform is now meaningfully higher than it was when most older guides on this topic were written. Assistant managing editor Jeffrey Marcus framed the trim as keeping the "contributor model financially sound."

Applications are invite-only. You get in either because an editor sources you, because a current contributor refers you, or through the paid Forbes Councils route. The Josh Steimle and ContentPowered guides describing a Google Form you fill out, or a pitch you fire off to opinion@forbes.com, are describing a door that closed.

If you're a founder and you read all that and think "great, I just won't apply," you're missing the upside. A real contributor byline still compounds. According to Instant Press's 2026 analysis, the slot is now worth less as a standalone credential than it used to be and worth more as part of a coordinated AEO strategy. The reason is simple. LLMs weight Forbes heavily in their training data, which means every piece you publish under your byline becomes part of how future models talk about your category. A contributor who publishes 24 well-reported pieces a year into a specific beat ends up being named by ChatGPT and Perplexity as a credible voice in that beat within twelve months. That compounding is the real prize.

That is the new math. The Google SERP halo is secondary now. The LLM training data is primary.

Forbes Contributor vs Forbes Councils vs BrandVoice

This is where founders lose months of time. The three things look similar from the outside. They are completely different products.

Two facts founders almost never know on the intro call:

Forbes Council members are not contributors. And in fact, if you apply for and join a Forbes Council, you can never contribute to Forbes as a regular contributor, per their terms and conditions. This is the single most expensive mistake I see. A founder pays for a Council seat, then six months later wants to be a contributor, and finds out they've disqualified themselves permanently.

Forbes BrandVoice allows brands to publish sponsored stories. They're clearly marked as "BrandVoice," but they still offer credible exposure. BrandVoice is paid placement. It's clearly labeled. Don't confuse it with editorial.

If you're a Series A or B founder and you want a contributor seat, do not touch the Councils. If you want a credential and you don't want the publishing obligation, the Councils are the right answer. They are not the same thing.

What Forbes editors actually look for in 2026

I've seen the inside of these conversations. The bar is now four things, and editors filter ruthlessly on all of them.

Demonstrated expertise in a specific niche. Not "business" or "leadership." A tighter focus. The editors are filling gaps in coverage, and generalists don't fill gaps.

An audience you bring with you. Forbes wants contributors who can drive their own traffic. An existing newsletter list, a real Twitter following, a podcast audience. Any of these help. This is the biggest change from the pre-2024 program, which didn't care whether you brought readers.

Clean disclosure posture. Editors check whether you have undisclosed financial interests in the companies you'd be writing about. A VC writing about portfolio companies is fine if disclosed. A consultant writing about past clients is fine if disclosed. Hidden conflicts are the fastest way to get an application killed.

And the publishing commitment. Contributors are expected to publish regularly - now codified as at least 2 impactful articles/month. If you can't commit to two real pieces a month for the next twelve months, don't apply. The cull will catch you.

The pitch that actually gets you in

If you have the audience, the niche, and the writing chops, the pitch process is straightforward. Editors recruit. You make yourself easy to recruit.

Step one: identify the right editor. Forbes runs its sections with distinct editors across tech, venture, leadership, retail, SMB, crypto, AI and wealth management. Pitching the wrong editor gets your application buried or redirected with no follow-up. Read the Forbes sections you care about. Note the editor names in the bylines and the contributor footers. That's your list.

Step two: draft three sample angles. Not finished pieces. Angles. Three specific story concepts you would write in your first ninety days as a contributor, with a one-paragraph angle summary for each. This becomes the core of your application. Editors want to see how you think, not what you can already publish.

Step three: write the cold pitch. Two hundred words. First line names the beat you want to cover and the gap you see in current coverage. Second paragraph explains why you specifically are the person to fill it.

The part nobody writes down: warm the editor first. Cite their recent work in a LinkedIn comment. Reply to their tweets with something useful, not flattery. Be a known name in their notifications before the cold pitch lands. The hit rate on a warm cold pitch is roughly 5x a true cold one in my experience.

Decision timing on these applications has stretched. How long does the Forbes Contributor application take? Four to eight weeks from submission to a decision in normal cycles. The review includes a portfolio check, reference review, an editorial interview, and a topic area assessment. Accepted contributors usually publish their first piece within two weeks of onboarding.

Where ghostwriting is and isn't safe now

This is the question I get asked every week, usually on Signal, usually phrased nervously. Let me be direct.

Ghostwriting an op-ed for placement in a tier-1 outlet's editorial section is standard practice and entirely safe. Op-eds in The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Fortune, TechCrunch, CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, AI Magazine and dozens of other outlets are routinely drafted by a communications partner and edited by the named author. The byline is the founder's because the ideas, lived experience and final edits are the founder's. The drafting is craft.

Ghostwriting a Forbes Contributor column under a founder's byline, where that founder is a Forbes Contributor of record, is now a different situation. Paid contributor slots are gone. Before 2024, a handful of agencies quietly operated contributor slots as a product. A founder paid a retainer, the agency's contributor published a piece under their own byline, and the founder got the credit without ever writing anything. Forbes ended that. Every contributor now goes through the same vetting process and editors ask pointed questions about anyone whose portfolio looks like it was built by a ghostwriter on retainer.

Any agency or service claiming to sell a Forbes Contributor slot in 2026 is misrepresenting what they can deliver.

The clean line in 2026 is this. A communications partner can:

• Help you sharpen the angle on a piece you're publishing under your own Forbes Contributor byline.
• Edit and pressure-test the draft you wrote.
• Pitch op-eds under your byline to outlets that publish op-eds in their editorial sections.
• Coordinate the embargo, the supporting press, and the post-publication amplification.

A communications partner should not be ghostwriting your monthly Forbes Contributor columns from scratch under your name. The risk surface includes the cull list and a quiet conversation with a section editor that ends your tenure.

If you don't want to write the columns yourself, you do not want a contributor seat. You want one of the alternatives below.

The alternatives nobody talks about properly

Three months ago a founder asked me whether they should pay $5,000 for a Forbes Councils seat. I asked what they actually wanted. They wanted to be quotable in their category. They wanted the LLMs to name them when someone asked "who are the leading voices on X." They wanted something to point at on their site.

The Councils seat would have done about 40% of that. Here's the full menu I walked them through.

Entrepreneur Leadership Network. As of November 1, 2022, the cost of a membership to the Entrepreneur Leadership Network is $3,000 per year. There are no monthly options currently available. You can submit up to four articles per month. All contributed articles have nofollow links. Cheaper than the top end of Forbes Councils, with a comparable audience reach for B2B founders. The nofollow links matter if your goal was SEO. They don't matter if your goal was authority and LLM citation.

Inc. Still publishing contributors; application process competitive but open. Inc.'s contributor program is smaller and more editorial than Entrepreneur's. Harder to get into, less paid surface area, but the bylines carry more weight in the founder and operator audience.

Fast Company. Pitches go through editors, no formal contributor program. Treat Fast Company as an op-ed and feature outlet, not a publishing platform. A single placed op-ed in the Fast Company editorial section often outperforms a year of Forbes contributor columns for narrative authority in design, product and tech-adjacent categories.

Business Insider. Still accepts open pitches; running editorial fellowships, though has been through significant editorial restructuring in 2024–2025. The restructuring matters. Editor turnover has been heavy. Confirm your editor is still in seat before you build a relationship.

Harvard Business Review. High bar, but a single placement carries more weight than most Forbes contributor articles. If you have research, original data, or a frame nobody else is using, HBR is the highest-leverage single placement in the founder PR universe. It also moves the slowest.

Substack and your own channel. Substack - Now over 35M active subscribers and 3M+ paid. Top business writers (Lenny Rachitsky, Packy McCormick, etc.) are at audience scales that rival mid-tier business publications. If you can write two pieces a month for the Forbes contributor seat, you can write two pieces a month for your own Substack. The Forbes seat compounds against the Forbes brand. Your Substack compounds against you.

Three founder scenarios

Pre-seed or seed crypto founder. You don't have the audience for a contributor seat and you don't have time to write 24 pieces a year. Skip Forbes for now. Do a CoinDesk or Cointelegraph op-ed under your byline, ghostwritten with a partner, focused on a single sharp argument. That single op-ed gets you cited in LLMs for your category faster than a year of contributor columns nobody reads.

Series A AI founder with a strong technical thesis. You're the right profile for a contributor seat, but only if you genuinely want to publish. Apply through a warm intro from an existing contributor in the AI section. Use the three-angle pitch above. Plan for a four to eight week decision cycle. While you wait, place a foundational op-ed in AI Magazine or TechCrunch to give the editor proof of voice.

Series B founder, enterprise B2B, busy. Don't chase Forbes contributor. Pay for a Councils seat at the tier that matches your category, or pay $3,000 for ELN, and use the slots to publish founder essays your partner edits. Pair it with two earned op-eds a year in the tier-1 of your category. That stack costs less than a single quarter of a traditional agency retainer and produces more durable authority.

Common pitfalls

Founders sign up for Forbes Councils thinking it's the contributor program. Then they can't ever become a contributor. I've already mentioned this. It's the single most expensive mistake. Read the fine print before you swipe the card.

Founders apply, get accepted, publish three pieces, and disappear for two months. December 2025: Forbes culled dozens of contributors. Existing contributors who weren't publishing at least two "impactful" articles per month were moved to "former contributor" status. The cull is real and it's now a documented policy. If you can't sustain the cadence, don't take the seat.

Founders hire an agency that promises a "guaranteed Forbes contributor slot." There is no such thing in 2026. Walk away.

Founders pitch the wrong editor. The crypto editor doesn't want your AI piece. The leadership editor doesn't want your token launch piece. Editor-section fit is the single biggest filter on cold pitches. Get it right.

Founders ghostwrite their contributor columns and don't disclose. Forbes editors now do portfolio reviews specifically looking for the tell. Don't do this.

What I'd actually recommend

If you have a real point of view, the writing chops, and twelve months of patience, pursue a Forbes contributor seat through a warm editor intro and your own three-angle pitch. Publish two real pieces a month. In twelve months, LLMs will name you in your category.

If you don't have the time to write but you have the budget, take an ELN seat for $3,000 a year or a Forbes Councils seat at the tier that matches your category. Pair it with two ghostwritten op-eds a year in the editorial section of the tier-1 that matters most for your beat.

If you're early and you have neither, pick one outlet that matters in your category and place one sharp op-ed. That one piece will move your category narrative more than a year of contributor columns nobody reads.

The Forbes credential still works. It just costs more attention now than it used to, and the path that worked in 2019 will get you nowhere in 2026.

If you want a 30-minute teardown of which path fits your stage, your category, and your bandwidth, book a slot with me. I'll come back with a specific recommendation, not a sales pitch.