Mar 9, 2009
How to Get Your Guest Post Published on a Pro Blog Posted by Jamie Harrop - 20 Comments
Recently, I’ve been writing a lot of guest posts for high profile pro bloggers and each time I do I receive several emails asking me how I was able to write for such a well respected and large blog.
To some people, the process to get a guest post published on a large blog is quite obvious, but other people often believe high profile blogs are only open to the elite of the guest blogging world.
Here are my tips that have helped me get my articles published amongst several high profile blogs, including John Chow Dot Com.
[digg-reddit-me]Guest Blogging Tips
Don’t Send an Introduction Email – Pro bloggers are busy people and they receive hundreds of emails each day. If you email them with the question “Hi. Can I write a guest post for your blog?”, it’s very likely to receive no response. Simply write your guest post and send it to the blogger. Don’t bother asking for their permission. If they don’t want to publish it, they won’t do so. If they do want to publish it, they will do so. There’s no need to ask for their permission first.
Keep Your Email Short & Sweet – Following on from a pro bloggers lack of time, they don’t want to hear your life story and your argument, no matter how strong, of why your guest post should be published. All they’re interested in is supplying quality content to their audience. If your guest post does this it will be published, no matter what your background or life story.
Attach a Snippet About Yourself – Generally, bloggers will include a small paragraph to say who the guest post is from (you!) and link back to your blog. Include a short paragraph, two or three sentences at the most, about you and your blog. What’s your name? Where do you blog? What do you blog about? That’s all you need to include.
Don’t Link Back to Your Own Blog (Too Often) – It’s very rare that I link a part of a guest post back to a post on my own site. If I do, I only do it once in the article. I also make a point of telling the blog author that I’ve included this link and it’s perfectly fine for them to remove it should they feel the need. So far, no author has removed any links back to my blog, but I like to make them feel they have control.
Don’t Use HTML – If you’re anything like me, you use the HTML writing mode of WordPress or your blogging platform of choice. When writing a post for your own blog, you may insert your own paragraph and list HTML tags rather than letting your blogging platform do the work. When it comes to guest blogging, go back to the content management method of letting the blogging platform do the work. Include your bold/strong/italic tags, for sure, but leave out paragraph tags. Most bloggers don’t insert them manually, so you’re saving the author time by not including them. And on the off chance they do insert them manually, they will be well used to doing so.
Do Give the Pro Blogger Time – You’ll quite often find the author doesn’t reply to your email. Don’t worry. Of all the guest posts I’ve had published, I’ve never received a single email reply from the author, other than the time I became aware that the author had decided not to publish my post (I gave him 10 days to make a decision), at which point I emailed him to tell him the post had been published elsewhere. He replied to thank me for letting him know and to confirm he would no longer consider it for use on his blog. Give the author time to make his or her decision. I generally give ten days. If the post hasn’t been published by then, I email them to ask them to no longer consider it for their own blog and then I publish it elsewhere, either on my own blog or as a guest post somewhere else.
Remember the Pro Blogger is Human – No matter how much money the blogger is making or how many subscribers they have, underneath the Web site there is a human. They’re not too big for you. You’re not too small or unimportant. As long as you’re writing quality content that is of interest to the audience, you stand a very good chance of seeing your writing in front of 40,000+ readers. 
Have you ever had a guest post published? Have you ever considered yourself too small to write for a pro blogger? Let us know in the comments!
PS. There is a followup to this post, discussing what to do after your guest post has been published.
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Category: Blog Promotion
Tagged: Guest Writing, Promotion
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22 year old self employed blogger and Web developer with
8 years experience running and managing blogs and online communities.
Nice post Jamie.
I have seen your guest posts and I will be trying to follow in your footsteps and get some high profile guest posts in the New Year.
Just out of interest, what sort of traffic do you get from these guest posts?
Thanks,
Andrew Masons last blog post..The Simpsons get an Apple Store
Great post – I was actually wondering just how you landed the guest spots. Congrats!
I’ve done one guest spot over at @Live Crunch but never have had time to do more…although I did get some links back to my site and my PR did jump up a bit from it.
Great tips Jamie.
I agree there is no point with sending an email asking permission to … email them
However, unsolicited guest posts from random people can also be annoying.
In lieu of the introduction email, I think it’s worth commenting on their blog a few times before sending them a guest post. With large A-list blogs you may need to get in right when the post is published to get their attention.
That said, I have broken that rule a few times, and typically do send a quick email before I write the post. I spend one sentence about myself, and then lay out in a couple sentences a concept for a guest post. So far it’s been received well.
Sid Savaras last blog post..Time Travel 101 – Techniques For Reliving The Past and Seeing The Future
Hey Andrew,
The traffic hasn’t been huge, but the conversion rate has. I get about 40-60 visitors over a week from the John Chow posts, and about 5 of them convert in to subscribers. Now, if I visit the blogs of all those who wrote a comment on the post, and write a comment on their blogs, I then end up getting many more subscribers through the new formed connections (I’ll be writing more about this tomorrow)
I highly recommend picking one blog and doing several guest posts for it, Nathan. The real benefit to guest posting comes when you guest post in bulk, continually getting your name in front of the same audience.
Hey Sid,
You make a good point. You really should know the audience and the style of blog before you write a guest post, and you can only find out this information by reading posts from the author and writing comments. It really does pay to establish some sort of reputation as a normal reader of the blog before trying to land a guest post.
Great advice, Sid!
Jamie
Hi Jamie,
This is one of the top articles I ve read on Guest post publishing on a blog….Thanks for the visit and the twitter follow..i am following you on twitter. I am hoping you can write a guest post on my site as well
ZK@Internet Marketing Blogs last blog post..November Blog Update
I haven’t read one of your guest post, but I’ll find one.
Similar question with Andrew here, how much traffic did you get from these guest post?
Aldhiss last blog post..Let’s take a walk!
That’s not a bad idea however wouldn’t you want to have more exposure over a wide range of people in the same niche?
Such as writing for John/Darren/Chris/etc – they all probably get the same type of readers but helps your portfolio just that much.
Hey Nathan,
I’m going to be talking more about this topic in my follow up post this evening (scheduled to be posted in just over four hours).
I do agree that you should extend out to multiple blogs in the same niche, but while doing so you should write multiple posts for each blog in that niche, or like you say, one post for each blog if you’re certain the blogs all have the same readers.
It boils down to getting in front of the same audience multiple times, and then you can do that with different sets of audiences for as long as you have the time to write.
Hope that makes some sense.
Jamie
Great tips Jamie! For everyone out there, this is a post to follow. Jamie has goals set and he’s really close to achieving them. In the last 2 weeks I already saw two of his posts on John Chow’s site.
Rowell Dionicios last blog post..A Bloggers Guide to Surviving A Recession
[...] I spoke about how to get your guest post published on a pro blog. Today, I want to discuss what to do after your post has been published in front of those 30, 40 or [...]
Intriguing ideas here, stuff I’ve never thought about in this angle. Heh. Thanks.
Ari Herzogs last blog post..If Seth Godin Could Change Your Life
Thanks for the kind words, ZK. I hope you stick around and subscribe. I’ve already subscribed to your blog.
Thanks Rowell, as always.
Jamie
Great article Jamie. I enjoyed your article at John Chow Dot Com and clicked the link to visit your site.
How do you determine which sites you want to guest blog at? Do you find sites in a similar genre to yours or are there other criteria you use?
Allan
Allan Wards last blog post..What to do about GM and how we can learn from it
Hey Allan,
Thanks for the kind comments.
I’ll try answer your question in a post soon, but in its most basic terms I look for large blogs in my niche and then test them all. I’m still doing this testing. Once I’ve found two blogs that bring in the most traffic and best quality traffic, I’ll target those blogs for all future guest posts.
Jamie
[...] you can always expand your reach and build your audience. Jamie has put together a great guide for getting your guest post published on a pro blog. Guest posts are great for introducing yourself to a new set of [...]
[...] short period of time. Guest posting isn’t difficult, but is effective. I’ve wrote about how to guest post for the pro bloggers [...]
Good list of different things to consider when writing a guest posts. Nice job.