Is Guest Posting At Other People's Blogs Worth the Effort? Find out in today's episode of Serve No Master podcast.
Usually when people are just starting their business will write a blog post for someone's website and give them the free content in exchange for a link to their own website in hopes to generate more traffic.
The benefits of writing a blog post for others are more visibility, traffic, and authority - Yahoo and Google still love that kind of content, even though the rules of the game change. As guest posting becomes more structured it is one of many ways you can grow your business.
So the question is not whether or not you should write that blog post, it is how to do it strategically. To find out more listen to today's episode of Serve No Master podcast.
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Resources mentioned:
Leave some feedback. We would love to hear from you!
Connect with Jonathan Green and Serve No Master:
The post SNM172: Is Guest Posting At Other People's Blogs Worth the Effort? appeared first on Serve No Master: Be Your Own Boss - Live Free
Connect with Jonathan Green
Is Guest Posting At Other People's Blogs Worth the Effort? Find out in today's episode of Serve No Master podcast.
Usually when people are just starting their business will write a blog post for someone's website and give them the free content in exchange for a link to their own website in hopes to generate more traffic.
The benefits of writing a blog post for others are more visibility, traffic, and authority - Yahoo and Google still love that kind of content, even though the rules of the game change. As guest posting becomes more structured it is one of many ways you can grow your business.
So the question is not whether or not you should write that blog post, it is how to do it strategically. To find out more listen to today's episode of Serve No Master podcast.
▶️▶️▶️▶️
Resources mentioned:
Leave some feedback. We would love to hear from you!
Connect with Jonathan Green and Serve No Master:
The post SNM172: Is Guest Posting At Other People's Blogs Worth the Effort? appeared first on Serve No Master: Be Your Own Boss - Live Free
Connect with Jonathan Green
speaker 0: 0:00
Is guest hosting at other People's blog's really worth the effort. Find out on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by EasyPay. Direct the payment processor for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. Get the lowest processing fees in the business by visiting servenomaster.com/easypay today.
speaker 0: 0:16
Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host.
speaker 0: 0:46
Guest posting is coming up more and more and the question is, people think about strategies to blog and it's a very popular strategy. Very simply, it's where you write a post on someone else blog in exchange for you providing them with free content, you get a link back to your website and as you delve into strategies to get more traffic to your website, the strategy's just two things, number one, someone on a more popular blog reads your post, goes to visit your blog you get immediate traffic, number two Google and Yahoo and Bing and all the search engines, they see that and they go, oh so that website is a little popular, web site A is saying website B has some good content they put this link in place, and it increases your ranking for different search terms. And we all know that back links links your Web site of one of the ways you increase your authority or power or just how much traffic you get. So the question of blog posting isn't should you do it or not? It's much more about how to do it strategically. I want to take you through that process in today's episode.
speaker 0: 1:39
The effect of a popular block post is immediate but short lived. I wrote a post recently for our entrepreneur. You can see linked to it in the show notes. It's all about designing a book cover that doesn't violate copyright because most people don't think about this. It's really easy to get in trouble. And Amazon and most of the bookstores have a standard policy that if you're accused of a copyright violation to take your book out immediately, you have to fight to get it put back up. You have to take on all liability, and it puts you in a horrible financial position. And you might not have even known he did it, so it will unblock post about that. And in that block post, I mentioned one of my books, had a link to a free copy, one of books, and I got a spike that lasted about 10 days until the next new post got put up on that site. So I got that short term burst. But long term, it's a site that's much more popular in mind, gets a lot more traffic in mine. And so I still get the value of that link, says, Oh, no, go here, and so their authority, their traffic, it still sends attention to mine, and the more that you could do the better. And why is this out there? Well, first of all, blogs need more content. The number one issue I have with my own site is generating enough free content. There are never enough blog posts, podcast episodes and videos on my channels. Never. If I could put out five blog posts today I absolutely, positively would. If you look through my history, there are large swaths of time where we just were putting out enough content. We weren't even putting out a blog post a week, let alone multiple posts per day. And unfortunately, it all goes back to my medical condition. It's this limitation. I only have so much time I could spend in the computer and actually formatting blog post imposing blog post. This is one of the hardest things for me to do. It's very, very physically challenging. It's one of the reasons I hired a much bigger team, and a big part of their job is to take my content that I produced and get it out there as I'm recording this several months before you hear this episode because I've recorded 10 podcast episodes in the last week between three and 500 small social media videos that have never been published, and we have about 30 blog posts that are sitting in our back into the not pushed out the door, and it all kind of goes back to a challenge, then our website, which is that we're changing the back end. We're changing the platform and the page builder is so slow, I had a big fight with her yesterday I said 'Look, you were supposed to finish that at the end of the week. You keep pushing delays, you're done. I've hired someone else. I'm replacing you.' She begged for extra 48 hours. We'll see what happens in the next 40 hours, but it delays everything we can't create a SOP, a standard operating procedure, series of steps to teach how to post every blog post because it's gonna change. And so it became a chicken and the egg thing. And it's very frustrating because I have content. I just can't get it out the door. And it's really, really, really hard to find people that could do that. I can find writers, I could pay writers. I buy blog posts all the time. I have no problem paying for content. I pay for loads of content. I love doing that. What we pay for content, they send you a word document. That's it. That's not a blog post. A blog post needs an image, it needs formatting and needs a free written tweet. It needs a little social media post. It needs images that are re size for social medias, all these additional things that we need that you didn't need when you started blogging 20 years ago. When I wrote my first blog post in 2005 you didn't need any of that. You needed a text, you didn't need to break it into paragraphs. Those days are long gone and what's needed now, what's required to make applied post work is a lot more complicated. No one wants to read text walls, unfortunately, so I, like many other people, have opened the doors to guess posting a few times.
speaker 0: 4:50
speaker 0: 4:50
But it's actually really, really hard for me to get people to write guest posts for me. You wouldn't think that. But it's absolutely true. And that's because, like every other blog, that's high quality, that has a traffic. We have guests posting guidelines. We have those guidelines because we need content that matches the quality of the other content on the site. Well, I would love every single person who listens this episode to write a post for me. It can't be a 300 word post. It can't be full of misspellings. It can't disagree with the other things that I teach. It has to be in alignment, has to follow. Now we have hundreds of ideas for you to choose from. We like it even more if you give us a list of three idea that you have, we could choose one we like the most. But in an entire five years, we've only got about two people that have gone all the way through the submission process. And I learned my mistake with the very first person I let do a guest post on my site because I didn't have the guest posting guidelines in place. And so she demanded I make all these changes. I had bunch of really great image but no she demanded 'I want boring images' that don't match the rest of the design of the site. And the people won't click on the post, and it became the least popular post on my entire site. No one wanted to click on it because she demanded, even after we rewrite to work the editor that we make it terrible. So now when someone writes a post for us. We have a really strict guidelines. You have to write following our guidelines because a post that no one wants to read doesn't really help me. If it doesn't fit the aesthetic of a side, does it for the structure the site doesn't put the quality of sight isn't really useful.
speaker 0: 6:05
But the reason blogs need more content is for four reasons. Number one. The biggest value is traffic. When I put out a new post, I sent out an alert to my list, my following that I put out regular post so that people know there's new blog post. I'd like to do every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, work towards that consistency so people come back. It creates engage when it creates that relationship that maintains our connection so that in between buying stuff, you know, looking to someone else for information between reading books, you have another source of information for me, and I really believe this year, by biggest focus is putting out more free content. That value for the writer is they get put in front of new people and they put up link back to their side and someone come back to your seat. You start to get that attention. So we both get traffic. The second benefit search engine optimization again. It helps both of us. I have a new article that I can try and drive traffic to and get other people to link to. An article links to you. So I get the initial benefit. But you get the benefit of all of my existing traffic, all my closing link juice. And the way this works is that as my ranking goes up, you get pulled with me because the value of my link to you goes up in value. I can get guest post on sites that you can't get access to yet because you haven't built up a reputation. And as I put post on those sites, they linked to me, then I linked to you and it becomes this connection where we rise each other. We bring each other all up. As I say in a lot of the emails I approach people. That's a rising tide, raises all ships, and I really believe that that you find places that have great content that you think would be good and when I post on someone else's website. A postal, I tell my audience. So I just question this. Once I look at my post, leave some comments so you actually give each other traffic. And when you proposed on my website, maybe you'll tell your friends your list. Anyone. If your list is only 10 or 100 people, that's still ten or 100 people there now come to my side. It's a little bit of a traffic boost. It's not massive, but it still counts. It means I'm in front of some new people and that now our names are tied to each other a little bit. It gives us a little shared attention. The third value is networking. My entire business is built on relationship. I spend an unbelievable amount of time in one among conversations to grow my business. Now the majority of what I do is not customer facing. It's not what you guys see. For me to record one of these blog posts takes 25 to 35 minutes. That's not entire day's work done. Most of my time is networking. Communicate with other people. I have multiple brokers who bring me deals all the time How do they come into my life Through networking? I form connections of them. My time. I never knew all the time, but it's really hard to build your network when you're just starting out right. How do you build a reputation? Had to get people's attention. You have to be strategic, and I'm gonna teach you that process in a moment when I teach you my entire guest hosting process. But I want you to see that once you've been a guest post on someone site, you have a little bit of their authority. I could say, Oh yeah, I guess posted here, here and here. You don't think that matters? Go to anyone's website. Anyone has ever written a post for the Huffington Post, what do they have hopping posters logo on their site, as seen on hoping to post as seen on NBC as seen on Fox News. And it doesn't have to be that big anywhere that's recognizable to your audience, and that's a little bit larger. That's what you're gonna do. The fourth value, well, it's money. We all wanna make more money. The end result of more traffic is it make more sales. Additionally, it could be a shorter cut. You could write guests post for someone, and that could turn into a paid position. Several of the blog's I follow. That's what happens when I first started out. I really couldn't afford to pay people to write for me. At this point, I can. I'm not that I don't have the biggest budget in the world because we have so many employees. We have Budget goes in so many different places, but I do spend 3 to 5 cents a word, since I need articles that are 3000 words long and pay anywhere from $90 to $150 per every block post I pay someone else to write, and plenty of people pay more than I do. It's absolutely fine. There are places you can go in there. Plenty of writers who are looking for a higher number than that totally fine as well. Absolute understand that if I had more budget and if more money was coming into the site, obviously I would have a larger amount to spend on blog post. But that's really something I got to this year. I used to not be able to even afford those numbers they don't hide, I don't hide what I would actually pay. It's no problem in the way you get higher on all these websites is your right double guest books and someone goes, Hey, would you be willing to do this full time or get paid? And it actually can lead to paying work? Absolutely. Right now I use external service, if I could hire someone in house to write for me I would. It's been a pretty hard challenge for us. And it's not a full time job, right, because we just need a post a week. What we pay is, buying a bunches of 10 posts, so I'll pay $1000 $1500 per task. You write ten posts and ideally, then you'll spend an hour to upload them all, chewing them all up. So then, when I review them, they're actually already in my dashboard and we're press. It's so much easier for me. That's the value. Having someone in house and if we saw commensurate spike in traffic that we would order more frequently, would go from ordering 10 articles every 2.5 months, ordering every month, and it should take you to write 10 articles of 3000 words, 2 to 3 days. So basically, you'll be making $350 or $500 a day, working three days a month. And now when other people says I'd say they need a writer, I have a lot of friends. By the way, I have this conversation with my friends, all the time. We're looking for writers in that range. Similar price range five cents a word is what most of them are paying, again, depends on the quality and how much you take cross the finish line. If you need no baby sitting, no editing. You create something amazing. You pick the right images, you format everything. I don't need to pay other people improve the article once you finished it. Yeah, you're gonna get the higher number. Have to bring my editor, Alison, that, in fact, have someone else go in and check all the formatting the night someone else has to go in and fix the links inside because we link to other articles internally. Externally. Well, then you're gonna be at the three cents a word mark cause we have to spend that money that could have spent on you to have someone else take the arc across the finish line. So I know loads of people who've gone from writing guest post to getting paid for writing post for the exact same websites. This is how you prove yourself. It's not always gonna happen. It's under guarantee it's gonna happen, but it's a great way to do it. I would absolutely love. I could have four guests posts a months from different writers like guest post Friday. I have interns that I've tried to train and some have done really well and some of fall to the side or other opportunities. One of my first really great intern, writer got picked up by a publisher, but what could I do, he had no time to continue work with us, but she was doing a great job until that happens. So there's the four benefits you get from becoming a guest poster. You get more traffic. You get search engine optimization link juice, attention back to your site. You form a connection with that block of stone and you can make money.
speaker 0: 11:57
So how can you make it happen? Some sites have like a whole guest post submission process, but for a lot of them. It's hard to find just because this site doesn't have it doesn't You can't do it. So way to start out with Step One is to find 10 to 30 great blogs that you really like. You know, I would love to guest post on these sites and then you're going to sort them by traffic and popularity. If your absolute beginner, then you might want to start with the smallest site. If you post on a side of someone I know that's smaller than me. And then when you come to me Oh, I wrote a guest post for this person. Here it is, and you can link to it. That's gonna get you so much more attention than if you come to me cold, and then when you come to me and you've been opposed for me, then you go to someone bigger than me and then someone bigger than them and someone bigger than them. This is how you end up on really big sites because each time you go, you've created a ladder. You create an ascension where authority increases. And you could say I posted for this site. That's a little bit smaller than you think. Okay, they heard of it. And this is how you could get on sites that I'm not on. And so you make this listen, you sort them into your start with the smaller ones or ones that are in your range. If you have a little bit of authority, they go up to the mid range. But I recommend starting with the smallest ones and working your way up. So to get to that top site that when you want to be on the most, means, you have to write 30 blog post If you get yes from everyone. Step number two is to invest in the first batch of sites you've chosen for a month for a month. What you're gonna do is they've comments on posts you're gonna share their posts. You're gonna do is social sharing. You're gonna give value to that site. I absolutely pay attention to the comments that come into my blog. I don't get a lot of comments. Some sites were really common. Heavy mind isn't I've never been that way. Used to really bother me, but I just accept it. It's just not how people communicate because I see people get lots of comments. I get lots of e mails. People like to direct message me on one on one. No problem. I've learned that lesson. Lean into your channels, but with getting such small number of comments that are legitimate comments every month I read all them. I noticed them. Even if someone also the team approves them, I go through it. I checked them all at once about that look. I mean, I notice who's posting who's boasting good content, and that's a big difference. It's not about just posting. Hey, cool posts, right? I don't know if those are spam or not. I get those. Sometimes when I can't tell if, uh, if you put a little effort or coming Oh, you know, this was really interesting. I did this. How about this? I have a poster. I say when I say, Oh, here's the five steps to starting your body at the bottom. Just give me a link to your blood. I'll look at your block and I look at those comments. I go to every one of those blogs. I always look at those I said I wouldn't that have been up for about four years. Every time some post I do it, I asked for specific things all the time in the comments. If you've written a guest post on someone else's site posted below this video posted, blow this on serve master directly on the post about this or post on YouTube channel. And I'll see it. My team is really good. We're organizing. Now we see all those comments they sent to me. Then I could see how could I love? I love to see what you've written for other people. I might just see that go Wow! And I'll message you go Hey, you know what would you write a guest post for me when I have to reach out to me? Is that small amount of effort? Most people do that much effort. Most people will listen this episode or watch the Video Bird's Nest episode and do nothing. They won't even clicking thumbs up. Even though it's a useful, helpful video so you can stand out. You already become a 1% or just by doing that small amount of effort and even saying that I know 90 out of 100 people that watch this video and you, too will not take any action. That's okay. I just know that's how the world works. And the reason we're leaving these comments in giving values that you're going to start to get on someone's radar, the person on the block will start to notice. Hey, you've written some really thoughtful comments. You put some real effort in what you have to say, and that's interesting to me and I notice it. And that leads us to step three when you actually reach out to the blogger where you say, Hey, I really like your site. I was I would love to write a guest post for you. Here's the article ID. I have and you say three ideas and even better is if each of the three ideas have three bullet posts undergo. Oh, I was really think about writing an article about this. This and this and my content. If I choose one of these three would be ABC, ABC, ABC. It's so easy for someone to say yes or no to a specific article. Honestly, if you come in ice cold and you have a good article idea, you give me three to choose from. And I like one of them. I'm just going to say yes. This guy's a right it is. It's so much easier if you send it to your message and you don't have that, You go. Oh, you take guest post, I say, Yes, I do. I usually never hear from that person again because all I'm really saying is OK, do what I just told you. Go write me some ideas. What A lot of people think guest posting is an assignment, a writing assignment. Writing is where I tell you what to write. I give you an outline. I do that for my team. Have for the spot cost this whole episode. Right. I've written outline 11 lines long, 11 bullet points and working my through it. We're most away to the finish line. We've run down really good, run bullet point number nine. But I did that. If you're gonna write a post for me, then I don't want to do that, right. Like I want you to do everything I want to really see what you're capable of, what I really love or people that I don't have to monitor. The less I have to watch what you're doing easy. It is for me to work with you, and this is a cross my entire business. I've scaled my business from two employees to 10 over the past six months. This is my third time building a large team. This is the first time it's been really good to me. Three swings, that bad fortune. I didn't strike out. It's really been hard for me because it's not natural for me. I have to read books, and learn about leadership and realize my responsible in all of these pieces. What I've learned along the way has really made a difference, and I look for employees that need very little oversight. Most my employees I speak with twice a week. At most we do. Most of our communications are project manage software. Give them assignments, I say. Figure out how to do it. Show me your strategy. I'll prove the strategy and the new implement because I can't manage, they say and management. A middle manager can manage seven people, and then every time you go beyond that, you need another manager. So if you have a team of 21 you have a person at the top, your business manager and then three managers below them who are managing each of those other teams of six. So I can't spend all my time management. I spent all my time creating content and doing big picture strategy and networking. So that means I look for people and this is everyone I know. We look for people that can self motivate, get the job done. What I don't want to d'oh is ever fall up with someone and say, Hey, how's that article going? Hate that mostly because I'll forget to do it. This is why certain projects I work out if you listen to the comic book episode, why did the art for the conflict takes six months? Because I wasn't checking enough. I wasn't doing a lot of pressure. Finally, I sent him a message. I said, Look, if you don't deliver the deliver balls, I'm just gonna cancel the contract and do a full refund. Oh, here's 90% of it done. I'm like, Why don't you send me those? Why have you been sitting on the page that we're done so I don't have enough bandwidth to chase people down. That's not what I want to do. If you say you're gonna write a guest post for me and then you don't do it, I'm gonna follow up with you. That's not my job. That's your job. And that's how you separate yourself. When I want to see is that other people are making these mistakes that you can avoid. When you reach out to someone, you have an idea and you say, Hey, I would love to write a post for you and I would love to share your messaging with my audience and you're gonna clue three post ideas. So if you say to me, Hey, Jonathan, I've got a small social media following of this many people I would love to post on your website and share with my audience. Now you is even higher, right? Three ideas. Good. You have an audience share with even better. The more value put in that first email, the more attention you're gonna get looking for is people that are demonstrating that there finishers People have demonstrated that they've done work. Advance. Hey, I laid the groundwork of sorts of time. You have said I'm not just a random person. What I get a lot of our offensive e mails. There's some tools. I think what it was called Outreach Ninja, which, unfortunately website is listed on which have Freeman email templates that air really, really offensive. And like, Hey, Jonathan or hey, owner of serving a master dot com, we noticed you have a blog. Thanks for noticing. We've written, ah block post that we think you should link to from your website and we'll even give you this. It's usually an image or ah, long post image or something like that. You know, some type of picture graham or image or that you can share on your website. And I know it's a copy paste, you know, because then it says at the bottom, like, you know, Webinar ninja are not weapon on engine outreach. Ninja. There's a couple other tools that do the same thing like male shake and a few other ones. So they're sending a garbage email. Now I happen to listen to the authority hacker podcast. I know that s your strategy, and I can tell these people are doing it wrong because there's a way to do it right. They're not doing? What they're saying is Hey, we've read an email that were copying and pasting the hundreds of people would like to put a piece of garbage content on your website that lowers Survivor website gives your visitors of bad experience and then when you link to our article so we want you to do Jonathan is post content from us on your website and link to our website and we're gonna give you no value in exchange. What we would like to do is attack. You're upset like a vampire. We're gonna give your customers a bad experience. Your readers of accident so we could extract value. They offer nothing. And that's why it's offensive. If they were serious and they approached me the right way, they said, Hey, we would like to write a costume article for you wholly original 3000 words with these bullet points and at the end you'd have a link to this article from our website. Don't edited it up. What do you think? That's interesting to me. Now you've got my attention and are quite he is good. You have a much higher chance of getting yes, but they don't do that because they're not interested in putting the work. What they're interested in is stealing value. These air value vampires, which is the worst type of people of the world, or people that are only looking, how they can take and never looking how they could give. And that's why everyone hates them. And that's why they have to automated approaches because they called me on the phone when I would say to them, would not make them feel very good about themselves. So you don't want to be like that. You don't want to come across as that type of person. If you write an email, it's not very good. And that's okay because you're learning. I can separate you go. You know what this person's already written? Ah, couple of comments is person shared something on social media of mine, this person's message around other channels. I know it's just not a body. I know it's not a piece of software that just searched and I came up in a queue. Would result because I rank for some random Q where they checked. That's difference. So we're trying to do is not only give value but demonstrate that you're not a value vampire, and when you do this, you get a lot of attention. The only reason. I don't write guests blog posts all the time. It's my condition if I didn't have problems putting content on XIII strike block post all the time. My very first blog, I was writing 3 to 5 posts and love doing it. Now I physically can't because of my infirmity. I'm limited because I live in the middle of nowhere. It's hard for me to synchronize my inner right now. My Internet speed is at about dial up speed. It's the same speed by and it wasn't about 1992. So during the daytime, when I'm awake, it's very hard for me to synchronize other people and do something. We're both connecting at the same time. That's why I don't do is money podcast interviews when I do pockets and if you have to do between two and 4 a.m. My time got three young Children forth young Todd on the way as a lot of time working at night. My Internet night has gotten Stabler, so I am doing more more podcast episodes. I love doing interviews. I love that type of guest content, but there's a lot more opportunities for guest posting on blog's have a physical limitation of the ones that would do it all the time. If you have been a budget in your strategic, you could pay someone else to write the post for you. Offer someone a post given three ideas. Say which one they like. You have someone else write the post, you send it over and you still get the back room. Nothing wrong because you both got what you wanted. They got a good piece of content. You got that link you're after, and it comes to that value mindset is now what you really did is you saved me 100 bucks. Post me alright. You paid someone you paid someone else 100 bucks. No problem. Thanks. Appreciate. Yeah, you could have a link for that. It's much better than when you approach someone and just try to pay for a link. But if you follow these strategies, you can grow your business and you can get traffic search engine optimization, love form. Some networking connections form alliances because then after you write a post for me, you could say, Jonathan, you know other places will be good to go. Yeah, here's a place of guest. Post it. I'll send you an email because you did something good for me. Now I can recommend you and you can start making money along the way because I would love to hire you as a full time writer. The amazing for both of us have really complex relationship where you can start making real money without working massive hours. That starts with a demonstration of your expertise. And that's the power of guests posting.
speaker 0: 22:48
If you found this useful, please let me know the comments below. Please post links to places where you've written guest post so I can see your content out there. Love to see what you're doing. I would encourage you, And that's another way that I could give you a little bit of value and I can't wait to see you succeed.
speaker 0: 23:02
I'll see you next week in our next podcast episode. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back next Tuesday with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race. Head over to servenomaster.com/podcasts now for your chance to win a free copy of Jonathan's bestseller Serve No master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you Tuesday.
speaker 0: 23:35
Thank you for listening to the serve. No master podcast. Email your questions to podcast at servenomaster.com and your question with my answer might appear in the next episode.