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Many bloggers these days are using guest blogging as their primary marketing strategy to generate traffic to their site. Most of the time, they will be hunting for gigs on A-list blogs within their niche because this would bring quality traffic, and help the conversion ratio. But there is another reason why you may want to consider guest blogging: what about making money as a guest blogger? Ever think of that?

Niche Blogging

I guess you know about niche blogging. But if you don’t, I recommend you subscribe to the Blogger Unleashed.

Niche blogging is currently a very popular trend on the web. Sometimes used to optimize for AdSense, or to sell affiliate products, the idea of niche blogging is to generate revenues from search engine traffic by optimizing specific keywords.

Bloggers owning niche blogging sites need guest bloggers to produce content. Of course they can produce their own, but once you start owning a few niche blogs, writing articles on a regular basis might become quite a challenge. This is where, you, as a guest blogger, could benefit financially by helping fellow niche bloggers.

A Different Game

This is a totally different game though. You cannot compare niche blogging to guest posting on ProBlogger or Lifehack.org, not really the same thrill. However, instead of providing free content to Lifehack and help them make money from their ads in exchange for a hidden by-line at the very bottom of your free guest post, this time YOU cash in for each an every post you sell. This could lead to recurrent revenues if the host niche blogger likes your work.

Write About A Subject You Like

I’ll use myself to give you a good example. I’m a TV freak and I’m not afraid to admit it. Particularly, I’m a big fan of series such as Dexter, Nip/Tuck, 24, Entourage, Chuck, Curb, House, and many more. Since I know I’m passionate about these series, I could easily write tons of articles for a niche blogger covering TV shows. For instance, I could be assigned to one or two series and produce weekly articles to help generate new content. The reason I recommend that you write about a subject you like or master is to make sure you like your job.

How Should You Charge?

Obviously this will depend on a few factors:

1. Your experience
2. The length of the post
3. Will the order require researches?
4. Guest vs Ghostwriting

1. Experience
If you do not have a lot of experience, you could low ball your first proposal and provide a first post for a small amount. $5-$10 could be your first gig. At this point you need to advise the host blogger that you are making a special for a first post. If you provide good work, trust me, you will get more orders. I tried and it works.

2. Length
Obviously, there is a huge difference between writing a post of 250 words and one of 1000. This has a direct impact on the price. Count roughly 400 words a page and set your pricing on a per page basis.

3. Researches
It’s possible at one point that you will get orders that will require some researches. Wikipedia is gold for that. Don’t forget to evaluate this extra time in your proposal.

4. Guest VS Ghost
Ghost is always pricier than guest. Why? Because a guest post comes with a link back to your home page and often a by-line, which is good publicity and helps you ranking if you choose the right anchor text. Since ghostwriting gives no credit to the original author, prices are higher. I often charge $5 to $10 more for ghostwriting.

Where to Find Gigs

There are 3 places I like to look around when searching for guest blogging gigs:

• ProBlogger Job Board
• Blogger Jobs
• Freelance Writing Jobs

Give Niche Blogging a try. Who knows, you might end up launching your own niche blogging site. Have you done guest blogging on niche sites? Do you own one and hire guest blogger? Let’s jump over to comments.

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