Jade Craven

Image by Stevendepolo

If you’re following my twitter account, you’ve probably noticed I’m on a slight guest posting spree at the moment. I had one up recently on Remarkablogger. I just submitted one to The Launch Coach. I’ll now be working on ones for Ittybiz, How To Make My Blog and David Risley.

I always say that you should guest post to accelerate the learning process. I’ve been surprised at the amount of feedback I’ve gotten lately. People have thought that I was more successful then I am and that I was amongst the rank of the blogs I’ve posted on.

In this post, I’m aiming to shatter a lot of the myths surrounding guest posts and give tips on how you can rock your guest post campaign.

Myth 1: Your main incentive to guest post should be traffic

Whenever people learn that I’ve guest posted on Problogger, they always ask about the stats. ‘How many thousands of visits do you get?’ Sometimes you do get a bucketloads of traffic from a post and some people are able to achieve that consistency. That’s awesome. It’s always replicable.

Now, my main priority has always been learning but guest posting does have other benefits. They include:

Building credibility:

Guest posts are awesome for changing how people perceive you. They get a bit of a shock when they realize how down to earth I am and, oddly, that accessibility leads to more product sales.

To learn:

I’ve paid thousands for various courses and, most guest posts are a form of free training. If you screw up, people will tell you. It’s then up to you to figure out how to improve with your next post.

If you’ve had other benefits from guest posting then share them in the comments.

Myth 2: You can’t make money from a guest post

My feature on Remarkablogger earned me $90 from sales of an ebook – an ebook I created because Dave Navarro challenged me to.

I’ve earned about $2000 on the back of three other guest posts. My posts have also led to me getting a job, going to conferences for free and JV’ing with other bloggers.

Ali Hale and Robb Sutton have sold products by mentioning them in high profile guest posts. Making money is achievable.

This was a shock for me. My original plan was to guest post with the intention of getting paid freelance work. Now, I’ll be using strategic posts to promote my paid products and services.

Myth 3: You have to chase the guest posts

I get asked a lot of questions about guest posting. Many of them center on people being too scared to ask. My previous method was to wait until I became friends with someone and DM them with an offer. Most times it was accepted.

I now wait for someone to ask me for the post. I then ascertain exactly what they want, right down to specific case studies to write about. This takes less effort and also ensures that the post really resonates with the audience. It gives you more time to write killer guest post and they’ll have a bigger impact.

Myth 4: You have to perfect your home base.

Jordan Cooper brought up an interesting point in the comment section of the Remarkablogger post.

“It seems counter-intuitive, but I believe you gain more traction by having your guest posts be the “cream” of your content as opposed to it on your own blog. You’re essentially “auditioning” in front of a new audience, so why not try to impress them as much as possible?”

I countered, saying that there is little use auditioning if your home base isn’t up to scratch. He then brought up an interesting concept.

That’s the key thing to determine – what’s your actual purpose?

Everyone’s motive may be completely different when guest posting. Maybe you’re not looking to drive traffic to your blog at all… in that case, it could be a great tool to position yourself to be solicited for *other* people’s projects. Making a name for yourself can be accomplished in many different ways, not just through your own blog.

This made me realize that it was fine if my blog still needed some work. My purpose for guest posting wasn’t to draw attention to my site. If I had waited until my home base was perfect then I would have lost many opportunities.

Over to you

I’m sure many of you have your own experiences with guest posting. I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Note: Most of this post was written while babysitting my nephew on my knee. Its not up to my usual standard, but I really wanted pump out some content on my own blog.

You may have seen my latest guest post at Problogger: 30 Bloggers to Watch in 2010. I’ve been doing a bit of guest posting over the past 6 months but nothing as huge as that post.

It went viral. The post is still echoing around the blogosphere and it even sparked a group writing project on Problogger.

Now, this isn’t viral by most peoples standards. It didn’t hit the front page of a social networking site nor get a significant increase in pageviews.

I refer to it as being viral because it got over 750 retweets within a week – and they are just the ones we tracked. It also sparked a lot of comments – positive and negative – on twitter and within the comment section. Many people took the discussion back to their own blogs and it has since led to the challenge.

It was like a crash course in blogging. This post explores some of the lessons I’ve learned. It sounds daunting but at the end, I talk about all the awesome opportunities that have come as a result.

Lessons learned:

Make it very clear who the list is targeted at.

I got a lot of criticism – some of it very harsh – that my list was biased towards blogs about blogging and social media. I thought that this would have been very obvious as Problogger is the leading blog about blogging and targets those at a beginner to intermediate level.

I chose to focus on people that I was familiar with. Many lists have done the same. However, because of the authority of Problogger I should have disclosed the niche focus in the title.

Understand that you can’t please everyone.

Even if you clearly define your niche, people will still get pissed. You’ll get criticized for everything you didn’t include rather than get acknowledged for all your hard work. People will be upset because their gender, country or sub niche wasn’t represented enough.

Most of the people took the post in the spirit it was intended in and added their own suggestions and lists in the comments. Darren did warn me that these lists do cause a bit of negative buzz but I wasn’t prepared to deal with it. I needed to learn how and the experience was invaluable.

Be prepared to do a lot of work

A huge amount of effort went into the post. I tried to highlight the projects that would be relevant to the core Problogger readership. I linked to the posts they had done in the archives. I spent 6 hours editing images that eventually had to be deleted due to a formatting issue.

I thought that after publication, I would just have to deal with the comments. Instead, I stayed up until midnight dealing with the post.

There was a formatting issue that didn’t appear in the draft. A number of pictures were stretched. I researched for about 45 minutes about how to fix those and quickly realized that it was something I couldn’t fix from the backend. I made the decision to delete all the images to stop the criticism. That night, Johnny B Truant commented that he had gotten a lot of twitter followers thanks to the post and would appreciate if I could send the twitter links of the other people featured. I realized that other people would be interested so stayed up until midnight adding in the twitter handles and creating a twitter list.

This work was appreciated. It has led to many new opportunities.

The fun stuff

It gives the illusion of being busy and in high demand.

I got a few comments from people regarding  how busy I had been this year and how I should relax. The Problogger post was written towards the end of last year. The TwiTip post, which had gone up the day before, was written on a whim. It wasn’t much of a time investment on my behalf but I learned that strategic timing with guest posts can do a lot for your brand.

It reminds friends to touch base with you

Most people know that I’ve had a family situation that took up most of my time. Because of this, I dropped out of contact with a lot of people. On that day Robb Sutton, Ali Hale and Michael Martine all sent emails thanking me. I was able to use the opportunity to catch up. I’ll now be working on a guest post for Remarkablogger and will be featuring Ali Hale in my networking product. I talk to them on twitter more. I comment on their blogs. This was an amazing benefit of the guest post.

It allowed me to make new connections.

Despite people saying the whole post was just back slapping, I didn’t personally know everyone in the post. David Risley? Huge fan but never talked to him. He’s given me the ok to do a guest post on his blog. Laura Roeder? Huge fan, but have barely spoken to her.

It also made people think of me as someone worth knowing. I’m getting more comments and @replies, which was great as I had slowed down my twitter usage.

Over to you.

While the initial backlash was tough, I loved having the opportunity to learn so much. I only talked about the main points in this post. Let me know if there is anything else you want to know and I’ll cover it in a future post.

Last week, Dave Navarro issued a challenge – a challenge to see whether you could create a product in a weekend. I ended up spending a week creating my first ever product: The Guest Post Mini Guide.

I’ve been asked many times about my guest posts on Problogger and Twitip. I’ve had family circumstances prevent me from taking up the many other guest post offers, but that didn’t stop me from earning thousands of dollars.

What is the Guest Post Mini Guide?

I’m creating a series of mini guides where I give comprehensive overviews of social media techniques for a really affordable price. This is the first of many.

This guide has 29 pages of the techniques I used to leverage other peoples audiences. I talk about:

• How to find the perfect opportunity to pitch a guest post
• How to maximise the traffic received
• How to leverage your post for further success

How you can save a lot of money

This is the first time I’ve released a product. Shortly after its release, I realized that it really resonated with the community. I decided to create a bigger product about networking for bloggers.

However, I realized that it isn’t fair to those that already bought this ebook. So, everyone who purchases the mini guide will get a free upgrade to the complete e-course when its released.

The e-course contains four modules:

• Guest posting
• Commenting on blogs
• Reviewing products
• Twitter.

You can buy it from e-junkie now for just $20. The product will be released at the end of February.

Over to you:

I’m planning on creating a series of premium products where I expand on the information given in my mini guides. I’m also looking for what type of topics you would like covered in future guides.

I would love to get your feedback via twitter, email or in the comments section.

An affiliate program is also available. I will be creating affiliate support systems and promotional materials over the next month.

Thank you for your support.