Allowing guest posters on your blog can be a very good move, not only it can bring a lot of unique posts coming your way on regular basis, but more importantly the quality of these guest posts is often top notch, which means you will be getting a non-stop supply of quality posts from some of the most creative writers in the industry (given that they deem your blog worthy of doing a guest post). In other words, once your blog is established as a good enough platform for guest posting, it will continue to grow on its own, as far as the content creation goes.
However, there are certain disadvantages that you must keep in mind while opening your doors for guest posting, or else this wonderful opportunity can turn into a head ache in next to no time. Keep on reading to know some of the menaces and how to deal with them.
Spam:
Opening your gates for guest posters means you should be ready for a lot of spam. It’s hard to tell what makes these spammers believe that the blog owner will even consider publishing the third rate promotional ads on their blog, but the almost zero probability doesn’t stop them from sending these in bulk. It’s not that you’re going to get these spam emails only if you are welcoming guest posts, but that’ll just increase the incoming to many times. This is something you’ve got to deal with, and even though it can be quite irritating, but it really is not as time consuming as you’d like to think. One good thing with these spam posts is that they are very easy to spot, you can simply look at the email or just the title, and tell if it is spam or a genuine contribution. Note that I am not talking about low quality articles, but pure spam, which means you don’t even need to go through the articles.
Editing Strain:
Spam is relatively easy to handle, because you can simply click the delete button and get rid of it, however there will be some articles which are not spam, just a little too mediocre. Problem is that it’s hard to tell if an article is worth using on your blog or not, unless you’ve gone through it. You can reject some articles because they are just not good enough, but there will be some that you’ll feel like using at your blog, but only after doing some heavy editing. All this editing work can be quite tiresome at times. If you are getting dozens of submissions on weekly basis, you have got to let go of the low quality ones instead of trying to edit and accommodate all of them, or you can hire a freelance editor on hourly basis.
Image by atduskgreg via Flickr
No unique identity:
Some blogs that accept guest posts are running on revenue sharing program, and most of them have lots and lots of categories, where they accept guest posts on almost all topics. After some time, these blogs start to give an impression of article directory and never get established as a blog. If you are accepting guest contributions, it is going to be a uphill task for you to maintain an identity and a unique flavor of your blog, which is important to maintain a loyal readership. Otherwise you’ll have to rely quite excessively on the traffic coming from Google.
Commuting with the guest authors:
When you are accepting guest posts, you’re morally obligated to be generous and supportive to your guest authors. You have got to respond to their emails and at times requests regarding some minor edits after the post is published. That might be a nuisance at times, but remember that they have spent hours on creating a post, and it won’t be fair if you refuse to take out a couple of minutes. You can create a separate email for guest submissions, and take out 10 – 15 minutes on daily basis to go through the inbox and responding to the emails.
About the Author
Has Written 1 Articles For Us!
Farah is an SEO expert, and writes on topics related to Internet Marketing. She’s working for smartpress.com that offers brochure printing .
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Hi Farah,
Guest posting can be a bit of a mixed blessing at best. If you get a good guest poster, one who not only provides good content but also promotes their post via Twitter, Facebook etc. and who pops in to respond to comments on a regular basis, then it can be a real boon.
On the other side of the coin, if you get poor content you can always reject it – at the risk of some hurt feelings of course. Getting into any serious editing can be a real time drain.
However, when it’s good it can be a real win-win for both the hosting blog and the guest blogger.
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Twitter: benwaynet
says:
Your comment about interacting with commentors as a guest blogger is a key to being a successful guest blogger.
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Accepting guest posts can be a bit tricky but then as the owner of the website you are at liberty to chose which ones are suitable to be put as posts on your blog.
Interesting. I have thought about guest bloggers before but never knew what it would be like. Thanks for the snapshot of what I can expect when going about this.