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5 Childish Reasons No One Is Guestposting At Your Blog

Ask any pro blogger and he will tell you that the more content you have on your blog – the more traffic you get. That’s mainly because each post you publish gets indexed by Google and starts getting search traffic since then.

hilarious photo by dcarmen

So the more – the better, right? You can publish a new post daily or maybe even two, but this way you’ll quickly get tired and probably run out of ideas. That is why it’s so sweet when people contribute their own posts to your blog!.. Hey what’s the matter? No one is offering you a guestpost? I think I know why!

#1 You didn’t let them know!

This is not something new, but people won’t contact you offering their guestposts unless you let them know there’s such an opportunity. There might be exceptions, but in general this rule is 100% true.

There are numerous ways to tell them that you accept guest posts. Here are just a couple that come to my mind:

Have a separate page in your main menu, called “contribute” or “guestpost” or smth like that;
Put a banner in the sidebar or footer of your website, saying you accept guest posts;
Send an update to your email list, stating you’re open for guest posting;
Say that on Twitter, post that on your Facebook page or maybe in your LinkedIn group.

TAKEAWAY: prior to waiting for some guest posts to appear in your inbox you need to ensure your audience is aware of this opportunity.

#2 They cannot find you!

Guestpost is a great opportunity to get traffic, build links, promote your blog/website or even self promote. That is why people are constantly searching for new blogs that accept guest posts. I know at least two ways they may search for guest posting:

1. Using Google Advanced Search.
You can leverage advanced search operators to find blogs in your niche that accept guest posts.

Searching for Exact Match phrases:

“guestpost for us” blog promotion
“accepting guest posts” online marketing
“write for us” blogging
“contribute a post” make money online

By putting double quotes around a phrase you’re telling Google to search for an exact match in the text of the page. What goes after quotes is needed to narrow a search by the niche.

TAKEAWAY: This method of searching tells us that we should use the above phrases on our page to get found by potential guestposters.

Searching for keywords in URL of the page:

inurl:”write for us” blogging
inurl:guestpost online marketing
inurl:”contribute a post” blog promotion

“unurl:” is an advanced search operator that tells Google to search for the given words within the URLs of the pages. Bloggers quite often create a separate page, to announce that guest posts are welcome. And in most cases the URLs of those pages contain the above words/phrases (see http://bloggerjet.com/guestpost-write-for-us/).

TAKEAWAY: This method teaches us to use “keyword rich URLs” once we create a separate page to announce guestposting opportunity.

You can learn more about advanced search here, here and here.

2. Using Google Alerts.
This method is pretty much the same to performing a search on Google, with the only difference that this is done automatically for you, and you only get the latest results. With Google Alerts you will receive an email notification once Google spots a brand new page that meets your search criteria. I won’t go into much detail, just go and try Google Alerts yourself.

TAKEAWAY: Once you publish a new page that meets the search criteria described above it may land into people’s inboxes with the help of Google Alerts. Just mention that you “accept guest posts” every once in a while and there’s a chance to be found!

#3 Your blog is lame!

People only guestpost because they are looking for traffic, links and promotion. This means that:

If your Alexa is bad – they know that you have no traffic;
If your PR, Incoming Links or other SEO metrics are bad – they know that there’s no value in your links;
If you don’t have comments, tweets, likes, shares – they know that there’s no point of promoting something.

TAKEAWAY: So ask yourself, what’s the benefit of guestposting at your blog? If it takes you more than a minute to come up with indisputable arguments – you’re in trouble.

#4 You’re not being persuasive enough!

Believe it or not, but some people may not know that your blog is quite powerful, and that it’s beneficial for them to contribute their posts to you. So why don’t you tell them all you got? Create that “guestposting page” we’ve talked about and list all the cool facts about your blog to prove it’s not lame.

TAKEAWAY: When you’re writing your “guestposting pitch” remember one thing: it’s not bragging, it’s the art of persuasion :)

#5 You’re unaware of the cool services!

MyBlogGuest

Have you ever heard of MyBlogGuest? At a first glance this is just a forum, where some people are looking for guest posters and others are looking for blogs to submit their work. But as you look deeper, there’s actually a number of great features like Article Gallery, Email Subscribtions and User Watchlist that really make your life easier. ( thanks to Ann Smarty I’m now a PRO user there :) )

Despite the fact that BloggerJET is too young to attract any interest (I admit it), I’ve decided to post a request for guest bloggers at the forum. I know my blog is quite lame at the moment, but I just had to try ( …and test my art of persuasion :) ). Believe it or now, but this actually worked! I got 3!!!!! offers to publish a post and I even had to reject one of them! The other two were published and judging by the feedback on Twitter it seems that people loved them:

This is how I got 2 awesome guest posts on a blog that is only one month old. I even thought this will be my headline for this post :)

Other Services

MyBlogGuest is the only service I know, that is specifically targeted to boost your guestposting. However you can try to leverage lots of other online services to announce you’re accepting guestposts.

Start from the blog communities like Bloggers, BlogFrog, Blogged & others (there’s a cool list right here). Most of them have some kind of internal message board or forum, where you can announce your willingness to accept guest posts from fellow bloggers.

Try groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. I won’t link to any of them directly, as you can find hundreds of them with internal search. Once you’ve joined the group post a discussion about guestposting and tell them your blog is open for this practice. Honestly I didn’t try this myself yet, but something makes me think there’s a nice chance of getting a guest post this way.

Anything else?

I’m afraid I’m out of ideas. Maybe you can share some valuable advice in comments? How did you get your first guestpost? What did you do to cultivate them? What works for you and what doesn’t?

For those of you who are here for hilarious child pics, here are a couple more :) They are soo great that I could not decide for a looooong time which one will be the main one :)