As someone that’s not only submitted a variety of guest posts, but watched others do the same, I’ve learned quite a bit about what not to do when writing guest posts for other bloggers. Even though a bad guest post experience might not kill your blogging career, it could ruin your chance to do business with other bloggers, so it’s better to do things…
Right the First Time !
So without further adieu, let’s get started!
1. Spelling and Grammar Mistakes
Look, it’s one thing to make these mistakes on your own blog, but doing it for someone else is ridiculous. If you’re not very good at catching these, then ask a friend to review your post before you submit it. If you make a mistake and don’t fix it, then you’re wasting another blogger’s time, and that’s…
A No-Go !
2. Poor Formatting
Please don’t send a Word document. The simple act of copying from Word (or Pages) and transferring to WordPress leaves a string of span tags in its wake, and is a nightmare for bloggers to deal with. Use a Word Doc as a preview, and then send a second text document in pure html. This allows the blog editor to copy and paste directly…
Without Spending an Hour
Formatting the Post
Afterwards !
3. Violating Copyright
Please don’t submit an image that violates a copyright, or is intended for non-commercial use only. Use a creative commons search on Flickr or…
Buy Stock Photo !
4. Pestering
Don’t be that guy that Tweets and emails a blogger to death about when they’ll post your guest post. It not only annoys the blogger, but annoys your audience and makes you look like a tool. If they don’t post it after a while, kindly mention that you’ll post it elsewhere, but realize that it’s likely that your post sucked and didn’t go up because…
They Were Too Nice to Tell you !
5. Not Commenting
It’s an unwritten rule that anytime you have a guest post published on another blog, that you should hang out and be available for comments. Don’t leave the accepting blogger alone to deal with reader comments, especially since they didn’t write the article and probably…
Aren’t the Best
For Answering Them !
6. Being Ignorant
Before submitting any guest post, you should research a blogger’s archives to better understand their audience and the type of content that works well for them. Though a talented writer might be able to switch things up in a good way, most people trying this fall flat on their face.
Always Know Your Audience…
Always !
7. Not Giving Your Best
I shouldn’t have to say this, but a guest post is not an excuse to write poor quality content. In fact, your guest posts should be the best posts you’ve ever written. It’s foolish to think that you can use throwaway posts as guest posts for other blogs, and to some, it’s downright disrespectful. If you wouldn’t post it on your blog, then…
Don’t Post it
On Someone Else’s !
When submitting guest posts, there are a lot of ways to go wrong, but if you learn from these 7 lessons, then you’ll at least bypass the most obvious, and that’s a great place to start.
Stay Sharp,
The Bad Blogger
Also Known As “The Killer Guest Blogger”
Article by Wong Chendong aka The Bad Blogger
This bad boy delivers the oohs, ahhs, and woes of money matters like any man would... rough. He's frank, to the point and likes it raw. There's no sugar coating here, except for the taste of sweet success and the beautiful women who love it just as much. TheBadBlogger.com is a blog pictured and accented with the likes of lovely ladies and while the dames tend to be a delightful distraction, The Bad Blogger always takes care of business first.Find out how you can improve your marketing tactics, money matters and blogging techniques by Subscribing to his RSS Feed to get the latest update of his blog post or go direct to his blog at www.TheBadBlogger.com. You may reprint this post provided you leave the content, links, author, and "about the author" section at the end intact.
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
Hehe, I actually got 2 emails today with people asking if they could post a guest post at my blog. I really hope they won’t come with some crap content thinking it will get accepted.
My articles are between 1200-2000 words long without any outgoing links or duplicated content. If they expect that I will publish some 300 word long wrticle with spelling mistakes and so on they can just gtfo. xD
Anyways, thanks for the article, I might add some of your points to my requirements list for posting at my website. Just wrote it today since people asked for guest posting, so it’s not perfect yet.
I’m having some trouble with getting it right. I don’t want it to sound like the articles needs to be so great that they are almost impossible to write, but I still want to let people know that I won’t accept crap content.
Alexander W recently posted..Make money writing articles online
Twitter: TheBadBlogger
April 13, 2011 at 6:20 am
Now, don’t ever think about whether someone who want to guest post on your blog will give crap content, as long as they send in the content and you read it and if it’s good and valuable but with lots of grammar mistakes, send it back and ask them to edit it again for grammar mistakes… don’t reject at least tell them what they’ve done wrong…
Look just imagine you wrote a guest post for me and there are a few grammar mistakes and I reply you tell you your guest post is rejected but didn’t tell you why it was rejected… how do you feel?
You will feel absolutely like crap… it was the same case as me… I was rejected by a ton of blogger out there for no reason… they never told me about why they reject, they never told me about what’s the problem with my guest post… all they do is send an email saying “your post had been rejected”
And guess what… that’s not educating but telling you to “get out” of my sight.”
Twitter: techcrates
April 13, 2011 at 5:25 pm
@Alexander: Even I get emails regarding guest posts and I reply to them accordingly…But they never turned back !! This annoys me a lot …. Argh
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April 13, 2011 at 7:10 pm
Oh you mean guest poster or you send a guest post?
Twitter: techcrates
April 13, 2011 at 8:44 pm
I mean Guest posters….:-)
Tech Crates recently posted..Samsung S8530 Wave 2- Bada OS
Or, don’t accept or volunteer guest posting at all if you’ll just jeopardize the host blog.
Karoline recently posted..En anden måde at finde en billig 4-stjernet ferie på
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April 13, 2011 at 12:29 pm
What you mean by jeopardize the host blog?
Well, it seems to me that you complain about this post not making it as a guest post, and yet you’ve failed at your own 2 first rules. You have a grammar mistake (it’s not “without further adieu” it’s “without further ado”) and then your formatting is all over the place, lots of empty spaces, midline paragraphs and unfinished sentences that would take time to get right in wordpress.
PS. I’m curious to see whether you can take the criticism and post this comment or have it deleted.
Phil recently posted..Yacht Charter Kastela – The Starting Point for your Croatian Sailing Trip
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April 13, 2011 at 11:08 pm
Eh… there’s a misunderstanding here, actually this post wasn’t written like this… for example the “without further adieu” is actually not written like this it is actually written “without further ado” I wrote the adieu is because these was posted on my blog and my blog does have words that are pre-written to fit my blog and lastly the empty space and medline paragraphs and unfinished sentence are format in the way of blog style, if you want to read the actual post I can send you the actual notepad format which is actually proofread by a company I had.
If you look at my other post… my style of writing for this blog is what it is… so do you want the notepad style? Just reply and I can send it to you for proof…
I get what you’re saying, it’s ok for your blog if it’s YOUR style, but if you want to post this as a guest blog, some people might not get your language artifices and wild formatting. That was the point I was trying to make.
Phil recently posted..Yacht Charter Croatia
Twitter: TheBadBlogger
April 14, 2011 at 3:13 pm
No problem, I get what you mean, and I know language artifices and wild formatting is really a problem when it comes to guest posting which I will take note of it, thanks for understanding, as for my blog, I do check for grammar it’s just that I want to be personal in writing that is why sometime I use words I created… I mean a trade mark
Well till yet I didn’t received any guest posting request but I will note down these points for sure . Maybe they can help me in future .
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April 14, 2011 at 6:24 am
Well… you can also use this list to actually guest post on other blogs that’s in your niche…
looks like a pretty reasonable post that you’ve written , im not too sure why it was rejected.. it’s sad that the host blog did not give you a reason.. thats the least these guys can do…
but then again you have different kinds of minds all over the world..
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Twitter: TheBadBlogger
April 14, 2011 at 12:21 pm
Well… my law is, if a blog rejected me twice without reason, I will move on to another blog, as time = money…. you can’t just reply asking for a reason, if they didn’t like… that’s okay with me… I just need to post somewhere else…
Hi Wong I really like your blog and your guest post. I really like point number 5. When you do a guest post you’re always replay for a commentator. I really love your attitude.
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April 14, 2011 at 12:23 pm
Well… thanks, and I always try my best to reply… and thanks again for reading my post, I really appreciate it… talk soon…
Nice tips man,you have to be EXTRA CAREFUL when you’re posting on someone else’s blog cuz they trusted you and let you write a post,I haven’t written a guest post yet but hopefully I’ll write one sooner.
Twitter: TheBadBlogger
April 16, 2011 at 7:09 am
Well… you should write one and I believe once your guest post is posted live… you get hook…
Awesome post, I liked the points very much
Giving reply for comments is the first thing that a guest blogger must do,
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February 24, 2012 at 1:58 pm
I’ve read that you want to put your best article on a guest post. If it isn’t – don’t even both trying to submit it! (Jeebus you’ve been busy!)
I am willing to take on guest posts – but they will have to be relevant to the content of my site. It doesn’t make sense to get a guest post about soap – when I run a gaming/technical website. *rolleyes*
Twitter: TheBadBlogger
February 24, 2012 at 9:33 pm
Ya, it doesn’t make sense, I once got a women contacting me asking me if she can guest post on my blog, and said my readers will like it, and she send me an article talking about tattoos… I ask her, does she know what my blog is about and she said “isn’t your blog about arts?”
She don’t even sure about what my blog is and she knows my reader will like… stupid right? Well after she reply me that she never email me again…
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