3 Things You Should Know Before Accepting Guest Writers On Your Blog

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When your blog begins to grow in popularity, you’ll eventually receive interest from fellow bloggers looking for guest writing opportunities.

This is a significant step in building your blogging business in the right direction, whereupon your readers and other bloggers alike have begun to realize that your blog is flourishing into a significant one, in what ever niche it is you might be in. I.e. your blog has been able to pull in a consistent growing number of targeted readers that are also engaging frequently, your traffic has grown to a respected level and your niche is sought after…

guest writers

…And so therefore your readers and fellow bloggers have come to realize that your blog is a unique opportunity for them to promote their own blogs through guest posting.

OK so before you start thinking about accepting guest writers on your blog, I want to share just three things with you today, these three things I want you to bare in mind at all times as you need to regularly work to maintain and uphold them, so that your guest writers understand your terms clearly before posting guest articles onto your blog.

Set out your guest posting terms firmly and clearly

As it says above, you need to create your own series of terms and conditions for guest posting on your blog. Be completely clear from the start and I’ll tell you why… Over the last few months I’ve received a number of guest posts that I have had to turn down because the authors simply didn’t read or comply with the terms that I’d laid out before hand.

A few weeks back I ended up with around a dozen and a half of poor quality posts containing not one of two useful resourceful links, but more inappropriately, 5 and even 10 links to none-topic related and keyword competitive sites. This was a no, no and so therefore I had to turn them down and reject them.

So my advice to you is that you ensure that you make your guest authors fully aware of your terms and conditions for guest posting on your blog. It will save a lot of hassle and confusion later on.

Create contributor profiles yourself

One of the best ways to tackle and prevent forum spammers from creating accounts and using them to submit trashy content as guest posts is to eliminate the self-registration process for guest writing.

For a while I entertained the self-registration feature on this blog, but after a few months I was gradually faced with a mountain of spammy registrations in which I had to delete and remove from the blog.

In your guest posting terms you need to outline that, if readers are genuinely interested in guest posting on your blog they should drop you an email instead, that way you can create the contributors account yourself. The other added advantage of doing this is that you can also create more secure usernames and passwords.

I know that sometimes this isn’t the most effective method of attracting guest writers but if you want to keep a clean sheet and continue to have quality content published on your blog, sometimes this is the best option.

Be very selective

Remember if you’ve been creating great content that have attracted lots of readers and traffic to your blog, then you’ve already built an undisputed reputation that you don’t want to loose. The moment you begin to accept guest posts you run the risk of publishing content that is completely on a different level of quality, if the quality of the posts is better than yours, then embrace it, if not then be very selective with what you end up publishing on your blog as far as guest posting is concerned.

Ensure that you read through everything and admittedly you’ll receive posts created by individuals with a not so comprehensive English language speaking and writing abilities. This doesn’t mean you have to reject posts by such individuals, it means you have to tweak posts before publishing them onto your blog.

So just to recap, the three things to do before accepting guest writers on your blog -

  • Create a guest writing opportunities information post or page and outline your terms.
  • Create contributor profiles yourself, don’t give the option for anyone to register.
  • Be selective with what you approve as guest posts on your blog.

Well I hope the three tips above will come to use if you’re thinking about introducing guest writing opportunities on your blog, I wish you the very best of luck.

If of course you have any additional tips or would simply like to voice your views and reactions on the tips above simply leave me a comment below.

Image courtesy of Flickr user: Vinnie123

  • http://www.zco.com/video-production.aspx Daniel Wood

    With success comes lots of friends. It’s our duty to find the true ones.
    Very nice post Fabrizio. Guest blogging is so popular these days. But one should be very selective otherwise it could undermine your reputation.

    • http://www.magnet4marketing.net Fabrizio Van Marciano

      Hi Daniel, thanks for dropping by. I like your moto and I absolutely agree with you be selective…

  • John Lier

    if we declare very posting terms firmly and clearly its automatic gives proper guest post which we want… nice share……..

    • http://www.magnet4marketing.net Fabrizio Van Marciano

      Thanks for stopping by John :) and you’re welcome.

  • http://www.beginnerstip.com andy

    Guest post is one of method to gain backlinks to our site. It’s really worth. But if we don’t select properly it can reduce our authority. All i can say is we have to very selective about it.

  • http://www.redsignal.biz Bill Smith

    Hi, Glad to read your post. All three points are very impressive and clear. Before we accept guest on our blog, we should check that the guest is following our terms and conditions. Third point is very good that the content of our blog must be unique. I am new to blogging sites and i learn much more from your post.
    Thanks for sharing this informative post.

  • http://geeksfever.com Ashish

    And do not make your blog a link farm for sure…

  • http://xtendedview.com Tushar

    First you should check the guest author website for any type of penalty in the google. like panda effect or selling text link.. it will affect our site ranking too.

  • http://www.myguestwriter.com Robert

    I agree that guest writing benefits both the writer and the blog. The blog gets potentially free, credible, content and the writer gets their works published on good sites with valid back links. As long as that relationship is held up the benefits are endless. I just started started a site that will hopefully help get guest writers and site owners together.