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Why Guest Bloggers are Great for a Blog

Posted By Darren Rowse 27th of February 2007 Miscellaneous Blog Tips 0 Comments

Matt Coddington has written a guest post over at John Chow’s blog on the topic of guest blogging and makes the point that it’s something that is really a win win win situation.

The blogger who does the guest spot wins because it exposes them to a new readership and (as Matt does) if you link back to your blog or if you arrange to have a byline with a link in it you can directly draw traffic back to your own blog as a result. Of course if you’re going to include links in your post make them relevant to the post itself.

The blogger who owns the blog wins because they get to take a break and keep their blog ticking over, they get to involve another blogger (remember giving readers jobs can be a great way to increase ownership of your blog by them) and they get a fresh perspective on their topic.

The reader wins because they get to hear about the topic of the blog from a new angle. Someone once told me (I think it was a parent blogger) that one of the lessons that they learned as a mother was the its not just parents who need a break from kids – its kids who sometimes need a break from parents. I think the same thing applies for bloggers and their reader – as much as your readers might love you – they need a break from you just as much as you need a break from them!

Wondering what else you can do with your blog to give yourself a break? Here’s 7 things I’ve done with my blog while taking a holiday.

PS: it’s only 3 weeks to go until I’m off for my US trip. I’ve already started lining up some guest posters who I think you’ll enjoy hearing from.

Read the full Guest Blogging Series at:

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. You know what’s funny, I was going to send you an email asking you more about this just last week. Here’s more fodder for your burning reader questions: When does it make sense to take on co-authors vs. guest bloggers?

  2. RGS has 7 guest bloggers – some post daily and some don’t . There is really nor pressure. I am love that other people post, it really takes the pressure from me to always find great new stuff. So I can be more relaxed working on my other projects. And on the other hand the Guest Bloggers being on RGS as well since I let them link back to their site on every post. A win win situation.

  3. I tried to use guest bloggers a few months back and wasn’t able to make it work…I wound up closing the blog down for a few months regretfully…and now my traffic has come to a screaching halt…won’t make that mistake again!

  4. I think Matt makes a good point when saying it is a win-win situation. However to make it work the blog and the blogger have to be compatible or it will be loose-loose.

    At the end of the day only the audience can decide which it will be. If the match is right they will enjoy the posts, which will help the blog, and be compelled to check the posters own blog, which will help the blogger. If not he will get no visits and the blog itself will suffer from less visitors, less comments or bad comments even.

    So for me the question rather should be how you would go about choosing the perfect match. Since I have no active blog (yet) I have no practical experience, but I would think my starting point would be checking out the blogs of my most frequent commentators as odds are that those would be most likely to match.

    Actually I could go on about what my criteria would be etc., but perhaps I will better bookmark this and use it on my own blog when I get it started. Forgive me for almost turning this into a post in itself, I was not intending to become the next guest blogger, no really I wasn’t :-)

  5. Luckily for me just about everything of my content is timeless so when I take a vacation I´ll just write some posts in advance and put in some future dates in WordPress. Although it would be cool to have a guestblogger or two sometime in the future perhaps, when the site has grown a bit more.

  6. One blogger I know is approaching the 1,000th comment on his blog and to celebrate (or perhaps give himself the day off :-)), he has proclaimed that he is handing over his blog control to his readers — well to the reader who submits the 1,000th comment.

    That 1,000th commenter gets to write one post about whatever he/she wants on the blog.

    I thought that was a really creative way to bring about a guest blogging stint. Also, when he announced he was at comment 974, people started leaving comments like crazy trying to be the 1,000th! It just became a funny kind of competition on the blog.

    It’s nice if you can find a way to turn your day off into a celebration and a treat for your readers.

  7. another great post…I need a guest blogger for my website????

  8. Hi Darren,
    Please forgive me post this comment here. I got trouble with my blog, and had searched the answers with Google. But it seems useless. I know this is a great blog and usually read your article about blogging. So I hope I could get the answer here.
    My problem was, there were more than 100 visitors per day to my blog, http://flashslideshow.blogspot.com and most of them were from search engine. Several days ago, the number of visitors descended to about 15 visitors per day. What was worse, when I search the keywords of blog, and there was no result, even if I type in flashslideshow.blogspot.com!!!!!!
    I really don’t know what’s wrong with my blog! Would you help? Many many many many many thanks!
    My mail is lijy_at_wondershare.com I would really appreciate your reply!

    Best Regards
    Anna

  9. […] Darren Rowse writes about Why guest bloggers are great for a blog after reading the Guest post over at John Chow’s Blog written by Matt Coddington. He says that it’s a win win situation because of the following reason : […]

  10. I love the idea of a guest poster … but have yet to think through exactly who I would ask. Because I feel like I have a very close link with my readers, I know that they would have certain expectations. And, on the reverse side, if I was asked to guest on another’s blog, I would have to seriously think through the article, the topic, the tone and so on.
    Or am I being too precious?

  11. At last, someone who values Guest Bloggers for all the good they add to someone else’s hard work… it was about time someone with your credibility stood up for us “guests”.

  12. Anna, recently Blogger rolled out some changes that affected the indexing of their blogs, inadvertently adding “noindex” tags to the headers of the blog pages. You may want to drop tech support a line and have them fix it for you, if this is what also happened to you.

    Also, there’s no way to contact you on your site, you may want to throw up a contact form so that your readers can get in touch with you. :)

  13. RGS, I would love to guest blog for you. I think we have the same aim in our blog, but also unique, I try to focus on inspirational posts as well, and inspiration is definitely good stuff….

    P.S. I couldn’t find a way to contact you on your blog, so I apologize for having to put it here.

  14. […] Gastautoren: Win, Win, Win! 27. Februar 2007 · Marcus ProBlogger Darren Rowse beschreibt zutreffend, warum eine Gastautorenschaft ein Zugewinn für alle Seiten ist: […]

  15. […] When I started writing about Guest Blogging earlier this week with my post Why Guest Bloggers are Great for a Blog I didn’t intend it to end up as a series of posts – but then people started asking about how to find guest bloggers so I wrote another one. Today I’ve been asked about how to get guest blogging gigs – so I guess this is a series of sorts after all. […]

  16. […] Problogger wrote a series on Why Guest Blogger Are Great For A Blog, How To Find A Guest Blogger For Your Blog, How To Get Guest Blogging Job, and How To Be A Good Guest Blogger. He also showed you 34 reasons why readers unsubscribe to a blog. […]

  17. I really welcome anybody as a guess blogger for my personal blog and my chemical engineering blog (http://chem-eng.blogspot.com) should be from chemical engineering or chemistry background…

  18. Good post (as always). Thanks for all tips :)

  19. […] If you’re an active blog reader (and if you’re a blog writer, you ought to also be a blog reader), you’ve probably seen guest bloggers on several of the blogs that you read. Well, scoring just one post on a popular blog can give your own blog a great jumpstart. Check out Darren’s post on Why Guest Bloggers are Great for a Blog for more info and links to his full series on guest blogging. […]

  20. […] « How To Display Relevant AdSense Ads Introducing Ashish Mohta – Guest Blogger After finding out why guest bloggers are great for a blog, I decided to invite a fewbloggers to write for JohnTP.com. I would like to introduce my first guest blogger – Ashish Mohta. […]

  21. And with all this nofollow crap you’ll really turn that win win win into a lose lose lose… who will make a quality post (or comment) for a nofollow link?

    Well, someone stupid like me, I guess.

    It really help to tell someone they are posting too fast when they are only making one post!

  22. […] Why guest bloggers are great for a blog […]

  23. […] why should you bother guest blogging? Apart from the obvious, everybody wins – the guest blogger, the blog owner, and the reader. Matt Coddington’s post on John […]

  24. […] brand. However there are some upsides (many of which I’ve touched on with this post on why guest bloggers are good for a blog). Whether you go for one off guest contributions or regular contributers there are some upsides – […]

  25. […] brand. However there are some upsides (many of which I’ve touched on with this post on why guest bloggers are good for a blog). Whether you go for one off guest contributions or regular contributers there are some upsides – […]

  26. […] brand. However there are some upsides (many of which I’ve touched on with this post on why guest bloggers are good for a blog). Whether you go for one off guest contributions or regular contributers there are some upsides – […]

  27. […] Why Guest Bloggers are Great for a Blog […]

  28. Its a great way to “share” readers from one blog to another but it’s not always working 50%-50% so both sides get the same number of visitors it depends allot on what the people like when they read it , and it goes beyond that , some people might like what they read based on theyr feelings , so if they are angry they might not like your post , or if they are happy they might like your post and come back for more.

  29. Totally agree! But just that sometimes, it’s hard to get guest blogger on your blog when you’re not running a successful one.
    Great blog like yours need not worry on that, of course. :)

  30. Keep looking I have just read your site and quite frankly I have a large frog in my throat,

  31. I’m curious about rights issues and payment and I’d like to know how other bloggers handle this.

    Are guest bloggers typically paid for their services or is this strictly a volunteer gig?

  32. i don’t think so, not all guest bloggers are paid for their services, because guest blogger are the one who need an information too like Seo and get more visitor traffics to their blog, so it a usefull tool that make a win way to get visitor, and also to get more backlinks. mmmm do you know the fast way to improve our blog??

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