Going Away For 7 Days And The Debate On Guest Blogging
It’s time once again for me to say Goodbye as I head off away from the internet for 7 days. This past week has been really great, with a new site launched and a new tool kicked off. I’ll hopefully come back feeling refreshed and ready to pursue online success with even more motivation.
Whilst I’m away, I’m handing over the reigns to Sarah, who will kindly be moderating all comments. In that time (and something which may cause a few handbags to fly), there will be a few guest posts published.
Now, a storm has been a-brewing on many sites which absolutely hate guest blogs. And I can agree with some of their points:
- The only people who benefit are the owner – who needs information to sustain the blog – and the guest blogger, who gets a little free exposure and a nice linkback
- The reader is left reading posts which are not by the author they subscribed to
- 9 times out of 10, the guest posts are of awful quality – because the guest posters would much rather save their best articles for their own sites
The most prominent haters of guest bloggers have been my buddy Mark from 45n5 who posted a video about the matter, and Kumiko from Cashquests, who wrote a rather humourous post aptly named “All Guest Bloggers Must Die”:
When you go to a blog and find that the latest post is guest-written it’s like buying a ticket to a Christina Aguilera concert and then when you arrive finding that Christina has the day off and Paris Hilton is singing in her place. If you’ve heard Paris Hilton sing – you know you’ll be wanting your money back!
Now so many people have already voiced their opinions on the matter, so I feel I would simply be regurgitating many archives worth of posts. To get to the point, guest blogging can be repetitive, the quality can suck and the readers can hate everything. But if they already have that hating mentality in mind, then what about those guest posts that can sometimes blow your socks off?
To me, it seems that the blogosphere can only accept you as a guest blogger, if you already have a reputation behind you. As a known fact, most guest bloggers are newbies to the ‘sphere looking to gain a few links and to spread their brand as a blogger. How on earth can they achieve this, if so many people don’t bat an eyelid when they’ve got an opportunity to impress? The whole point of blogging is to share – whether it be information, photos, videos or links. Sharing and allowing newbies a space and a bigger readership to throw ideas off is bound to help them as a blogger. What if you were the reader of BlogBloke and all of a sudden, Problogger himself throws in a guest post?
I guess the statement “All Bloggers Must Die” must be a little bit of an exaggeration then… 😉
To get back to the point and end my little rant, I’ve been very careful about which articles to pick this time to be published when I’m away. Don’t get me wrong, my last batch were fantastic, I’ve just had to be a lot more picky this time.
What can you expect? I’ve got a 3000 word essay on design, an awesome series on using WordPress to create static websites and a nice little post on being Omnipotent!
That’s me done, have a great week. Adnan out!
