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And now for a guest post with a difference from Cartoonist Mark Anderson from Andertoons.com who created this comic to illustrate the writing techniques he uses to create his cartoons, and how they can help bloggers push through writer’s block.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Blog Like a Cartoonist – Six Stunning Secrets to Help You Break Through Bloggers Block

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Blog Like a Cartoonist – Six Stunning Secrets to Help You Break Through Bloggers Block

guest post by Kelly Diels

In November, I rebranded and relaunched my blog. I screwed up, I suffered, I sniffled, I refuted the advances of a pervy tech wizard. And I thought: I’d better track my results to see if this was worth it. This better have been worth it.

It was.

On November 10, my Alexa rank was 1,082,076.

Two months and one day later, it is 173,556.

So, in just two short months (and one day), I raised my Alexa rank by almost one million places.

In three months (in the screen shot above, look at the bottom right figure of 1,766,896), my Alexa rank increased by almost two million places.

How’d I do it? I’m so glad you asked.

Once you get past the first set of ingredients – have a seriously small and unpopular blog – the recipe is simple. It simply requires a ridiculous amount of work and a bit of creativity.

Still, I’ve itemized and analyzed what I did differently in the last two months just so I could whisper sexy blog secrets in your ear.

Here is a list of my torrid confessions.

1. Write unique stuff

Yes, this is just another way of saying “write great content! great content! great content!”. There’s a reason everyone says it, repeatedly: because it works.

I admit it. When I started blogging, I was a wannabe. I wanted to be Steve Pavlina, Darren Rowse or Yaro Starak.

Now, I just wannabe myself. I’m lit-on-fire for the written word, I have big, ballsy opinions, I’m in bed with surprise, and I love to love. That all shines through in my transparent and sometimes pulpy posts. I know the blogging and business-writing rules and alternate between obeying them and breaking them with abandon. It is roller coaster writing, to be sure, but it seems to be a ride with an lengthening line up.

The lesson: be you, write you, and write wild and free.

2. Get your great stuff out there

In two words: guest post.

I don’t have a commenting strategy – or maybe I do, but it goes like this: don’t really do it, unless profoundly moved or delighted by the post or am crushin’ on the writer and you know who you are – so guest posts are almost exclusively how I get in front of new audiences.

Guest posts bump up my traffic significantly. In the last two months, the single greatest driver of my traffic was, you guessed it, ProBlogger. There was even one day when I had two guest posts up on both ProBlogger and Write to Done.

That day was a good day.

(That day was the day I started making money – but that’s another post, entirely.)

You know who I blame for my promiscuous guest-posting?

Josh Hanagarne, World’s Strongest Librarian. He encouraged/pushed/nagged me to guest post, but I was too timid. (Really. I was scared. What if people said no? Rejection is not my thing.) When coaxing me to approach other bloggers failed, spectacularly, he took a new approach.

He demanded a guest post from me for his site. So I sent him one and his people loved me up. It was like rolling around in a meadow full of daisies and puppies and then a unicorn slid down a rainbow and gave me a cupcake. Magic.

Then, after more encouraging/pushing/nagging from Josh, I wrote a guest post for Darren Rowse at ProBlogger. Of course, I didn’t submit it for ten days until I got exasperated by my own cowardice, cursed myself out and straight-up courted that fearsome dragon – Rejection – by pressing send.

Darren accepted it in something like 15 minutes and made nice virtual noises. Later, he said he’d publish as much as I could send him. That was all I need to hear. I sent him A LOT.

Suddenly I had confidence and started sending pieces all over the place.

And my blog grew. So did my traffic.

The lesson? Guest posts work predictable magic on your blog. Go forth, guest post, bewitch and bedazzle.

And have big, strong, nagging friends.

3. Write more, more often

I used to post new pieces 1-3 times a week. Now I post 5-7 times a week. I’ve simply developed a habit of writing every night. It is sometimes painful, almost always exhausting, I’m wasting money on cable I never watch, Facebook misses me something fierce, and I have very nearly stopped dating.

(Very nearly. Not entirely. If I stopped dating, what would I write about? I romance in the name of research. THAT’S HOW MUCH I LOVE ALL OF YOU.)

And then there’s Twitter. I’ve written 322,560 words on Twitter, which is basically a novel in Tweets.

Oh. That just made me a little sad.

But other than that twinge – I could have written a novel in the time I spent Tweeting, oh yes that stings - I’m ecstatic. I’m having so much fun. I’m seeing results.

And my blog is growing.

The lesson? Don’t worry about statistics. Worry about quality.

I didn’t set out explicitly to raise my Alexa rank. I set out to improve my blog, light my writing on fire, and make a lil’ love to my people (and find more of them). And, as a result, my blog took off and took my Alexa rank with it.

You can do it, too. Please do.

And then tell me all about it on Twitter, where I still won’t be writing my novel.

_____________________

Kelly Diels is a wildly hireable freelance writer and the creator of Cleavage, a blog about three things we all want more of: sex, money and meaning.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Boost Your Alexa Ranking (by a MILLION Places!) in Two Months and One Day

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How to Boost Your Alexa Ranking (by a MILLION Places!) in Two Months and One Day

Before you get too impressed, hear this: I did it all in self-defense.

Let me give you some quick background.

I have extreme Tourette’s Syndrome, as Sonia noticed recently. Tourette’s makes people move or vocalize involuntarily and occasionally results in unspeakable awesomeness. My motor tics range from eye blinking to punching myself in the face to even stranger things. My phonic tics range from clearing my throat to hooting and yowling and snarling and slobbering and screaming like the Tasmanian Devil.

Did I mention that I work in a quiet library?

There are only a couple of things that help when it gets bad. Guitar, kettlebells, talking, and writing — they are all forms of distraction that force the itch out of my brain for a while.

But sometimes none of them work. In September I was having a horrible time and couldn’t shake it. I needed a project to focus on. A big fat distraction.

Enter the guest post ultra marathon.

Come one, come all!

I wanted everyone to know they could ask for a guest post, but I still got a lot of “My blog’s probably too small, but . . .” I have a lot of readers with big blogs, and a lot of readers with tiny, new blogs that are still swaddled in onesies. All were fair game.

The criteria

I asked everyone who wanted a post to provide:

• A URL and blog title
• A topic
• A word count
• An interesting angle to approach it from

I said I wouldn’t write about anything I felt was unethical, morally reprehensible, or obvious spam. I didn’t want this bio floating around the web:

About the author: Josh Hanagarne is the author of Cialis Rules! He enjoys popping a few Vicodin in the morning and a dozen Viagra for lunch. His hobbies include MAKE CRA-Z MONEY FROM HOME! and topless tell-all webcam romps.

Luckily, I didn’t get any of those solicitations. Well — not many of those.

The response

Uh oh.

I published my post, subtitled “Let’s Get Stupid,” at about seven in the morning in the United States. By one o’clock my teeth were chattering with fear as I looked at my inbox: over 70 submissions.

Refresh. 75.

Refresh. 80.

Uh oh.

Who were these people? I was going to be writing guest posts for blogs about stock options, personal development, computer programmers, home schooling, study skills mentoring, blogging, advice for women, fussy academics, chemists, Capoeria buffs, kettlebell nuts, corporations in the process of building websites and trying to make everyone get along, and so on . . . .

A smarter man, a man whose brain was less of an apocalypse, might have scaled things down or extended the deadline. But this was exactly what I needed.

To work, then.

The first week and onward

I wrote 15 guest posts in week one. They all published within a few days. When the dust cleared, RSS numbers had jumped by 200 during those seven days.

The remaining six weeks were similar. Sometimes I wrote more. Sometimes less. Sometimes I wrote guest posts that I never saw again. My posts appeared with different titles, different pictures, different fonts, and the traffic just kept coming.

After about 10 days, my tics had subsided, but I was committed to the project. I was having a blast.

Lessons learned, surprises, and observations for anyone who wants to try this

By November 1 I had written over 50 posts. 42 of them had aired on other blogs. Here is what I learned:

• A lot of bloggers seem to have a fear of guest posting. Get over it or be happy with your current rate of growth.
• You will meet awesome people.
• Those people will act like you are doing them a favor by borrowing their traffic.
• You are doing them a favor, provided you give them something they can use. I love to have guests!
• This marathon approach is not for everyone. Do not try to write more than you are capable of. Test yourself but don’t flame out. I have a masochist work capacity and I still wound up with more than I could handle. I thought I would get the 80+ posts written before November 1. Life, sleep, the flu, a book proposal, and kettlebells all conspired against me.
• Don’t commit to anything that will prevent you from taking care of business at home(page). There’s nothing more pointless than writing a killer guest post and having all those new visitors land on a dancing Hello Kitty graphic that’s a year old.
• Don’t pretend you know things you don’t. If you can’t talk about stocks, either find another approach or turn it down. Don’t be a poser.
• Don’t be afraid to say no when people pitch ideas to you. You made the rules, right?

I don’t regret doing the marathon, but I won’t do it again if I don’t have to. I still have nearly 40 posts to get through before I’ve knocked out that initial batch. I’m going to honor them all. In the meantime, if you’d like to be added to the queue, you know where to find me.

I can handle it.

About the Author: Josh Hanagarne is the twitchy giant behind World’s Strongest Librarian, a blog about living with Tourette’s Syndrome, kettlebells, book recommendations, buying pants when you’re 6’8”, old-time strongman training, and much more. Please subscribe to Josh’s RSS Updates to stay in touch.

Excerpt from:
What I Learned From Writing 42 Guest Posts in 7 Weeks

Do you feel like you’re fighting for every page view your blog receives?

Do you wonder why you’re struggling to find readers when other bloggers seem to just hit “publish” and the world comes running?

It may be tempting to throw up your hands and say, “those other guys have all the luck,” but it won’t get you anywhere.

The truth is, those “lucky” people are doing something you’re not doing.

(Or they’re doing what you are doing, but better.)

If you want to get lucky, you’re going to have to give up the “poor me” attitude and make some changes. Here are some ideas.

Listen before you talk

Two guys walk into a bar (humor me here). The first guy walks up to a woman and says, “Hi. I make a lot of money and drive a really fast car, so you will definitely want to go out with me. Here’s my number. When you’re ready to go out, call me.”

The second guy sits down at the bar and listens. He hears the woman next to him complain to the bartender that the last Italian restaurant she tried was terrible, and that she couldn’t seem to find good Italian food nearby. When there’s a break in the conversation, he says, “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help overhearing about your bad experience with some of the local Italian restaurants. Have you tried Davio’s Cucina? It’s really excellent.”

Which guy is more likely to end up with a date?

I’m betting on guy #2. Instead of just blathering on about himself, he waited and listened for an opening. He started a conversation based on a shared interest. And because he’d been paying attention, he found a great angle to quickly capture the woman’s interest.

When you’re trying to get people to read your blog post, newsletter, or free report, the biggest mistake you can make is to assume that other people are just dying to learn about you and your product (or service). They don’t care about you.

Figure out what they do care about and start there.

Don’t try to be someone else

You know those cheesy pick-up lines you occasionally hear in bars? Lines like:

• “Are you an angel? Cause I think I just died and went to heaven.”
• “If I could rearrange the alphabet, I would put U and I together.”
• “Do you have a map? I keep getting lost in your eyes.”

Each of these lines must have worked for someone, somewhere, at some point in time. But that doesn’t mean you should use them.

There’s a lot you can learn by studying successful copywriters and marketers, and you should learn as much as you can. But you can’t blindly copy what they’re doing.

Swipe files and traditional copywriting techniques are only useful if you can intelligently translate them to your market.

That means you have to figure out how to apply those techniques while still being yourself. And you have to make sure that your content is still something your audience wants to read about.

Stop talking to yourself

Let’s say you’ve just moved to a new city and want to throw a party at your place. Should you (a) sit in your condo and yell, “Hey! I’m having a party!” and then wait for people to start showing up, or (b) go to the next condo association meeting, mingle with the neighbors, and invite them to come by this Friday evening for drinks?

If you think the answer is (a), you seriously need to get out more.

If your blog is getting 20 visits a day, you can’t just keep posting stuff there and praying for more readers. You’ve got to get out and meet some new people.

How? Join a LinkedIn group in your niche and start answering questions. Write a guest post for a popular (and relevant) blog. Comment thoughtfully on other bloggers’ posts and start to make friends. Ask your Facebook friends to forward your stuff to people they think might enjoy it.

The point is, you have to go where your people already are before you can get them to come to you. Find them, talk to them and then invite them back to your place.

You might just get lucky.

About the Author: Traci Feit Love is a writer and communications consultant specializing in content marketing and smart copy. Visit her website for more information or to sign up for her free e-course, “How to Get More High-Paying Clients.”

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How to Get Lucky With Content Marketing

This is another guest post from Robby G at Shite I Like.com where he gives expert dating advice for both men and women, amongst other advice.

I’ve only recently realized the benefits of good Karma. Greed and blogging doesn’t go well together at all. Right off the bat I wanted to say that if you’re thinking of starting a blog strictly for money and your heart isn’t in the blog topic, you will not only fail but you will lose all that time you’ll spend creating the blog and writing content that will be extremely difficult to produce just because it’s not something you believe in but just something you think has a high monetary rate of return. There are two ways to looking at blogging: 1. Every other blogger is your competition, or 2. Every other blog out there is an opportunity.

Though other blogs, particularly that write about a topic similar to yours, are your competition, they are also your ticket to success. Now allow me to explain.

Opportunity in the Blogosphere

Think about this, if you were the only person on earth with a blog and no one would have caught on to this wonderful innovation then your blog would quickly die because there wouldn’t be enough demand for blogs, blogging, or bloggers. Since there is a blogosphere and people are enjoying each others’ blogs, that means that there is room for you to grow and create a leading blog in your niche. But what if there are already tens or hundreds of blogs writing about the same topic as you are? Well, use that in your advantage. I’ve noticed over the years that mostbloggers are quite good people (nevertheless I have run into one or two a**holes) and they don’t mind to share their knowledge, their friendship, and most importantly their love for blogging. There is opportunity in your competition because if you are a good-hearted individual and aren’t greedy about attracting all the traffic to yourself, there is room for you to grow. Now what are the ways to attract Brownie Points with Karma? There is a list of ways that you may think do not help your blog, but in fact they eventually attract much more people to come to your blog overtime than you would have if you did not take part in them. Here’s the list:

• Provide useful comments on other blogs: By doing this I did not only get lots of traffic from people clicking on my link, but I also received emails from the authors of the posts asking me if I could broaden my comment into a full post and submit it to them as a guest article. This doesn’t happen for every comment, but there’s that chance people will really want you to share your knowledge as a guest post without you even asking for it.
• Link to other blogs in your posts:Linking to other blogs may seem like a sure way to lose readers because they will simply jump ship and start reading your competitor’s posts. But that’s a mistake many bloggers have in mind. By providing readers with relevant links, they see that you know what you’re talking about and you want to help your readers with the most informative links.
• Blogroll: I personally do not have a blogroll on my blog, but what I do have is a post with my favourite blogs that I follow daily. Since only recently I have been getting out there and making lots of friends in the blogging community, I have decided to create a full-blown blogroll linking to the blogs of my friends, which is in the works. I do not ask anything in return from the blogs I link to, because I leave it all to Karma, and more often than not the people I link to end up linking back to me.
• Attract guest posts: Guest posting attracts you links and new traffic, but when you allow other bloggers to guest post, you attract bloggers, sometimes a link from their blog, and again a wave of good Karma. When someone guest posts on your blog they right away feel a certain companionship with you and that can last for a very long time. From simply allowing and attracting guest posts, you open yourself to an opportunity of new friends and new openings for yourself to maybe one day create a certain campaign with that friend that will attract a much wider audience than your current one. If you think you have ideas for a guest post relevant to my blog topic, feel free to contact me.
• Get expert opinions: If you’re not too sure about something, go ahead and ask an expert. People love to be praised and a great way to do that is to ask an expert what they would do in a certain situation. For example, my blog is based on giving dating advice, so if I was to be stumped on a reader’s dating question, I would ask a fellow expert on their opinion and I would throw in some of my ideas to complete the most perfect advice I could possibly provide for my reader. This way I am showing my reader that I care about their issue and want to provide them with the most help I can, and it also allows me to get in touch with interesting people who may eventually want to conduct some sort of business later on, seeing that I cared enough to reach out to them for their expert advice.
• Interview and help promote others:Interviewing others gives your readers fresh new content. It also gives the person being interviewed exposure of their product or website. And what about you, the blogger? Well, it gives you the opportunity to grow. After interviewing an expert in my field, I did not only get to give my readers new content, but I also received an advertising offer from the person. It builds your credentials, authority, and broadens your circle of friends.
• Fill your ad-space. Once in a while when you don’t have advertisers waiting to fill up the empty space-ad you have on your blog, contact someone that may be interested and give it out for free for a month or so. This is an act of goodness, plus it gives more exposure to your advertising services, and maybe some day that person you gave away an ad-space for free to will help you out some way or even pay for some ad-space in the future.

These are just some of the ways you can use to help other bloggers and get good Karma. It all usually comes back to help you out somehow or someway. As long as you find ways to share the love and don’t feel the need to be greedy, good things will always come your way.

Do you have any ideas for ways to share the love and still reap the benefits? Leave your thoughts in the comment section. Cheers!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Don’t Be a Greedy Blogger

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Don’t Be a Greedy Blogger

Whaaaat, don’t tell me you didn’t… are you for real?! Well, what happened? Are you sick?…

Did you ever have a similar conversation with your boss? I’m sure you did. We all experience the unproductivity beast at times. In case you don’t recognize it, try this for size. You just spent a whole day procrastinating about your lack of productivity and go to bed a frustrated person, ready to do another day of … doing nothing.

When We Have To Stop Kidding Ourselves

It’s OK to be a master procrastinator from time to time, but not most of the time! Interestingly though, a lot of people who claim they can’t make money online are exactly that! They busy themselves with meaningless tasks such as reading blogs, eBooks, tutorials, email, and the countless other tasks we do each day. Oh, I did forget Twitter, chat and other social media.

If you don’t see growth in your business, look at what you DO each day to help your business grow. Do you actively:

• Market your business?
• Work your business to earn money?
• Brand your business?
• Network with people who can bring you new business?

If you said no to all of the above, then you need to do some major renovating and restructuring of your working habits. In fact, you NEED to get proper working habits, because you clearly don’t have any.

Admission Is The Key

When we are unproductive, we usually are for good reasons. We could be:

• Exposed to constant distractions.
• Unhappy about our working environment.
• Unclear about directions.
• Resenting our boss.
• Unmotivated.
• Experiencing a lack of passion/drive.

Or we could simply suck at self-management. If you do, then don’t worry. Not everyone is born a productive guru. Most of us have to unlearn bad habits and learn good ones. Whatever the reason for your lack of action, as long you admit to yourself that in fact you do suck at being productive, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Be honest about your lack of productivity and don’t kid yourself about doing the things that don’t matter to your bottom line. Checking email a dozen times a day won’t put money into your pocket. Neither does chatting on instant messenger.

Once, and if you have reached your daily target, you can indulge all you want into the pleasure side of business/a job.

Setting Benchmarks

A great way to beat unproductive habits is by setting benchmarks. I like to work with daily income goals myself. If I haven’t reached a certain income target in a given day, I simply don’t rest. I work when I’m sick, angry, frustrated and happy. To me, all these personal states of being don’t matter as much. What matters is my business and going forward.

Is it easy? Heck no. At times it is the hardest thing I do, especially when I work with the worst cold, or fever. But as long as I can work, I usually do.

There is much satisfaction in finishing a day, knowing I’ve done all I could that day. It is the one reason why I’m successful and not wishing to be!

How you too can become a productive person, in charge of your destiny

The step from major procrastinator to major achiever is often smaller than you think. The secret of the whole concept lies in the step.

It’s the action, or the lack of it that ultimately makes the difference in your day. If your head is filled with things you need to do, then you should try to prioritize your priorities first.

The quickest way to stop procrastinating is to ‘just do it,’ in the true Nike sense.

Reclaim your life by facing the unproductivity beast head-on. It’s not going to be easy while you retrain your habits, but I can almost guarantee you that it is possible to become a very productive person by following the tips below:

• Work in short productive bursts. The burst is determined by your concentration span. For some this relates to 20 minutes at a time, while others can last a full 45 minutes.
• After each productivity burst take a short break to refresh your mind and body.
• Drink lots of water. Try to avoid too much coffee (yeah, I now it’s my vice too.)
• Opt to work in a no distraction zone whenever you can.
• Make sure your office is well lit and has fresh air.
• Start the day with the most complicated task.
• Work out a system that works for you, forget what the gurus say.
• Enjoy the ride!

Feel free to add your tips on becoming more productive.

This was a guest post from Deep Arora from How I Did Blog.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

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How To Increase Your Blogging Productivity

Google recently announced the “Google 2.0″ – The next generation Google search engine to compete with the likes of Bing and Facebook.

Google is and has always been a work in progress in the thought that they frequently changed little things in their gigantic algorithym for how sites rank, how pagerank is decided, and the usual. Today, things are a little bit different because Google has unveiled what is going to be a totally new search engine from the inside, although it looks like the normal old Google on the outside.

The new search engine is dubbed to be faster, more efficient, be able to crawl and index pages faster, and provide more accurate results. While it isn’t completely finished yet (and many big algorithym changes that have been launched in the past are not fully transfered yet such as algorithyms that make recent posts rank higher), Google has infact let the public visit a web developer preview of the new search engine here:

http://www2.sandbox.google.com

At the current stage and time, they are looking for developer feedback on the differences between the “public google” and the “google caffeine” results.

Whether or not you submit your feedback, it is interesting to see how your sites will rank when the Google Caffeine infrastructure is moved into the real google.com in the “next few weeks and months.”

This Google update is huge from a search engine optimization and link building standpoint because everytime new algorithyms and infrastructure changes like this happens, it shows what types of SEO are truly long term and beneficial, and what practices to avoid.

This is a guest post by Collin LaHay who is an search expert optimization expert that blogs about link building, and helps teach people how and where to build links to increase their rank in the search engines.

Read more from the original source:
Google Caffeine – What You Should Know

There’s tons of web stuff to do for my sites, but I just can’t be bothered getting to it – I’m being lazy. If I was smart, I’d be doing some link building or trying to grab some traffic. How? Here’s a few simple ways I could use to get a few links and some traffic to my site.

• Go search on Twitter what people are talking about. A lot of twitter users have blog, and you can find those in their twitter bio. Check out their blog, find a post you like, and leave them a good comment. (nothing like:”great post, kthxbai!”. You hate spam too right?).

• Check back in that long-lost forum you haven’t visited in months. Double check if your forum signature is still relevant. Chances are that you have found a better keyword to focus on, so change your signature accordingly, and leave a few new posts.

• Write a blog post for a popular blogger. (gawd I’m funny!) Give it your best shot – the better your article, the better chance you’ve got for them to publish it. Also, their readers will see how awesome you are and come check out your blog. (Granted, this might not be ideal for lazy bloggers).

• Think of ten interview questions and write these down. Then go ahead and email this out to other bloggers. As soon as you post the interview on your blog, chances are that they will link back to their interview with you. People like linking to stuff about themselves. I know I do.

• Go answer questions on Yahoo Answers. Loads of people there, find the right questions and reel in their visitors. If you can answer if someones cat has schizophrenia, or how to get big hair, you’re sorted. People will love you and worship you online.

• Set up us the Google bomb. If you’ve been reading John Chow’s blog long enough, you know what I’m talking about. If not, basically all you need to do is get other bloggers to link back to you with a certain keyword you want. To make sure they do, give away tons of free stuff. Contests are an excellent link building strategy.

Now, let me just whisper a little piece of advice in your ear – DON’T CARE ABOUT FOLLOW OR NOFOLLOW! A link is a link. Pagerank is overrated. It just seems valuable, because people think it is valuable. I say screw pagerank. I have sites with PR0, yet they are #3 in Google out of 100.000.000 results, and they get me 1.4 million pageviews per month. Its all about the SERPS, not about PR.

So, by the time I finished writing this post, I figured I’d best take a piece of my own advice and try to have this submitted as a guest post. And if you’re reading this, that means my advice worked, and I’ve built a new link to my own blog!

Find out what I’m doing right now by following me on Twitter.

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Six Solid Steps To Get More Links And Traffic

Here are a few quick tips on how not to approach guest posting if you’re looking to have a post published on someone else’s blog. They come from my own recent experience of interacting with a number of bloggers approaching me to write on my blogs.

I should note the most people who approach me about guest posting do it right - so if you’re one of them this post is probably not about you!

1. Using Someone Else’s Content

One of the stupidest things you can do when submitting a post to someone else’s blog is to use someone else’s content. You might laugh, but I’ve had this happen to me numerous times. On one occasion the guest post submitted was extra familiar - it was something I’d published years ago on my original blog!

2. Using Content Published Elsewhere

Don’t submit a post that you’ve already posted on your blog (or that you intend to publish on your blog in the future). This is one of the more common problems I have with guest posts. I’m not sure if people do it intentionally to try to get away with it or that they’re unaware - but having the same content appear in multiple places on the web doesn’t help anybody rank well for that content in Google. Write and submit something unique. If you do intend to post something in multiple places make sure you get the approval of the blogger first.

3. Poor Quality Writing

Let me start by saying that I understand not everyone has the same ability in this department. Let me also say that you don’t need to be the most brilliant at spelling or grammar to be a successful blogger - however one of the main reasons I reject content is around the quality of writing.

4. Content that Isn’t Useful

Successful blogs are blogs that are useful to people in one way or another. As a result successful guest posts are posts that meet needs, answer questions that people have or that solve problems. If your content is not much more than a 500 words that do barely more than touch the topic of the blog you’re unlikely to connect with the audience or make an impression upon the blogger.

5. Self Promotional Content

The main reason that you as a guest poster are likely to engage in guest posting is to get exposure to a wider audience. That’s pretty well understood by everyone - however sometimes posts go too far and become more about the guest poster than anything else. If you’re going to use links back to your own blog inside the post (as opposed to just a byline) then make sure they’re completely relevant to the post itself and useful to readers. If you’re too self promotional you’re less likely to have your post accepted and if it is you could end up hurting your reputation with those who read the post. Read more on this at When Guest Posts Become Too Self Centered.

6. Irrelevant Content

One of the things that surprises me most about some of the guest post submissions that I get is that they don’t relate to the topic of my blog. One submission for a guest post that I received last week was for a post titled ‘10 Ways to Prepare for a Job Interview’. The post itself was quite good - however considering they wanted it to be published here on ProBlogger….. it was a complete waste of both my time and the author of the post’s time to submit it to me. While this is a fairly extreme example many submissions that I receive show a lack of understanding of the topic of the blogs that they are asking for a guest post on. The more tailored your post is for the audience of the blog you want to appear on the better.

7. Topics that Have Been Published on Recently

Another reason that I regularly reject guest posts for is simply that the posts submitted are on topics that I’ve recently covered on my blogs. This one is a little tricky because as a guest poster you’re not always fully aware of what the last month or two have seen published on a blog but a quick perusal of the archives or search for keywords will help you identify what has already been covered. Another quick tip to stop this happening is to email the blogger with a topic before writing it to see if it’s something they’re interested in.

8. Writing on Ideas that the Host Blogger Doesn’t Agree with

This is another tricky one that takes a little research to avoid but if you’re wanting to write on a topic that is a little controversial it can be worthwhile finding out what the blogger thinks about the topic before making your submission. There’s nothing wrong with a blog having different opinions shared on a topic - however if the blogger doesn’t agree with what you’re going to write (and has a different ideology) you might want to talk to them about how you can present an alternative point of view without it seeing as though you’re undermining them.

9. Demanding too Much

I have no problem with working with a guest poster to make sure that they benefit from their guest post and fit in with their needs - but occasionally I get submissions from potential guests who place such high demands on when and how their posts should appear that I give up. Remember that you’re a ‘guest’ publisher - while this doesn’t mean you should be walked all over by the blogger you should be polite and not too demanding.

10. Biting off More than You Can Chew

Sometimes I get amazing submissions from potential guest posters who suggest ideas for posts that are so big that they’re actually unable to achieve writing them. Often it’s about topic selection and choosing a topic that is simply too big. Other times it is about saying you’ll have a post ready by a deadline that is just not realistic. Be careful not to over promise or you could leave a blogger without a post on the day you said you’d have one ready.

11. Not Following Up a Post in Comments

This one is common. You’ve written a post, it’s accepted by the blogger, they publish it, readers respond in comments with their own ideas and questions….. and there is silence from you as the blogger. One thing that can help your guest post to stand out and be even more useful is to interact with those who read it. This not only goes down with the readers but it makes an impression upon the blogger. Similarly - another way to make an impression is to actually promote the posts you’ve guest posted. Tweet links to them, promote them on social media sites, link to them on your own blog etc. This all helps your blog to be more successful which helps everyone.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How NOT to Get a Guest Post Published on a Blog [in 11 Easy Steps]

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How NOT to Get a Guest Post Published on a Blog [in 11 Easy Steps]