Starting Your Guest Blogging Career In Minor Leagues
Posted by Patrick on December 13th, 2007
Who doesn’t want an RSS counter showing more than 1000 subscribers? Many bloggers are looking for the miracle formula to get plenty of new subscribers each weeks, but in reality, unless you pay big money to advertise your blog on strategic sites, making it to major league will require time and perseverance.
Guest blogging expands your horizon because the very first time you start writing for other blogs, you expose yourself to readers who have never heard of you before. Of course you could continue blogging thinking you will expand your readership slowly by producing quality content (i.e. pillar posts). But this will take a while, and unless you come up with a brilliant idea that pro bloggers will all be linking to, you’ll need to find ways to get more exposure. Guest blogging gives you this instant visibility.
Go For The First Base
If your first gig is a home run on ProBlogger, John Chow or Zen Habits (you get the point), then congratulations! But starting your guest blogging career on these super blogs is like skipping minor leagues and getting straight to the majors. You may want to consider guest posting on smaller blogs at first.
Minor Leagues Help Learning
Minor leagues are no waste of time, they will help you in many ways to become a respected guest blogger. For instance you will learn how to:
- Write guest posts
- How to produce pillar articles and convince yourself to publish them somewhere else (this is difficult)
- How to approach a fellow blogger
- How to submit your post
- How to prepare your blog for new visitors
- How to deal with comments left on your guest post
Guest blogging in minor leagues helps establishing contacts. Launching your first blog is like moving to a new town when you’re a kid, you need to make new friends. If you want bloggers to talk about you or your content, you need to develop relationships… you’ll find guest blogging to be quite efficient at that.
Opening Channels
Each time I get a new request for a guest post on PiggyBankPie, I feel like I’ve made a new friend. Since this person becomes a contributor to my blog, I want to stay in touch and get to know this person. What’s the easiest way to stay in contact in the blogosphere?
- Visit the guest blogger’s site regularly
- And… subscribe to the RSS feed!
From now on, if I see killer content on my friend’s blog, be sure that I will blog about it on my site. Not only guest posting gives you instant visibility, it opens permanent channels between bloggers. And these channels are vital to get backlinks and referrals.
Other Posts In This Series
How To Find Tons Of New Quality Visitors To Your Blog
The Guest Blogger’s Guide To The Blogosphere
Have you tried guest posting yet? Do you have something to share about it? Let us continue this discussion over the comments.
Patrick
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December 13th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Hi Patrick ~
I can see your point but I am a firm believer in aiming high. My first guest post was at Zen Habits and I am not looking back
Your readers might also enjoy this post I just wrote entitled “How to Handle Blogging Rejection With Grace and Dignity.”
http://www.mytropicalescape.com/2007/12/10/how-to-handle-rejection-with-grace-and-dignity/
Lord knows I have been rejected just as often as my posts have been accepted.
Have a great day!
December 14th, 2007 at 1:10 am
Hey Patrick,
Interesting post, I think if you are still finding your voice and developing your writing skills, that’s not a bad idea. But, if you can write and have a strong voice, but are simply new to “applying” that voice to the vehicle of blogging, I am not a believer in the need to pay your dues or go one rung on the ladder at a time. Put another way, if you’ve got the ability to leap, why would you settle for lumbering?
Be bold, go for the top. My first contributing gig was a weekly column at FreelanceSwitch.com and that came only a month into blogging. My second was lifehack.org and that weekly gig came after only two months.
So, if you’ve already got your skills and your voice together, I say take a shot at the top. What do you have to lose? If they say no, then work backwards.
Thanks, as always for a thought-provoking article!
December 14th, 2007 at 11:51 am
great blog!
February 12th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
[…] keep me from watching American Idol , I will be joining piggybankpie’s to start guest blogging. I think it would be fun to write as I get more visitors. What do you […]
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:30 pm
[…] site, and that’s a very effective way to recruit new readers. At first, you should consider guest blogging on smaller blogs, then once you’ve secured a few good gigs, move on to bigger blogs, with you goal being to […]