Here are some of very common mistakes which blogger do while posting guest post. You should get hold on these and if you become successful to take on these mistakes, Believe me YOU can get lot of traffic.
- Writing the guest post before you pitch me. Please send me multiple story ideas, with bullet-pointed sub-points, and let me suggest the best one for my audience. See sample pitch below.
- Not doing your research. Here’s a 2-part suggestion: (1) Note how I format my posts, then copy it. When I submitted to Tim, for example, I noticed that he uses a large image with a small caption, then long, detailed posts. Here’s my guest post for him. (2) Writing something called “Credit cards are evil!” also reveals that you’ve never read my site and its key messages. Educate yourself. Here’s an over-the-top example of doing research before submitting a guest post — and it works.
- Not sending writing samples. Bloggers are lazy and risk-averse. I don’t want to invest a bunch of time in back-and-forth email exchanges if the end result turns out to be a crappy post that I can’t use, and I don’t want to disappoint you by saying “no” after you put in all that work. If you don’t have writing samples, get some — start by guest-posting on smaller blogs. Always include writing samples — preferably ones written on other blogs — so I can see if your writing style is a good fit.
- Limiting yourself to guest posts in your domain. There’s no reason to. My site isn’t just about personal finance, it’s about entrepreneurship, optimization, lifehacking, etc. If you have an interesting guest post on how you altered your car to make it drive longer, or how politicians get policy wrong, I might be interested.Check out Tim Ferriss’s take on this:“Trackbacks from diverse leading blogs and guest posts on popular sites like Huffington Post. To the first point, I write on a diverse range of topics, so I can get linked to from more social circles. From muscle building to ultralight travel, I tie it all into a larger concept of ‘lifestyle design.'”This is a classic application of the Kevin Bacon game, who was the most-connected actor because he had acted in high-value movies, low-value movies, and everything in between (whereas Tom Cruise mostly acts in high-value movies only).
- Submitting trite linkbait. Here’s an example of a post I will never run: “23 reasons equities are doomed!” 99% of list-y articles are idiotic link-bait and will be forgotten by the next day. High-traffic sites, for the most part, want great articles that will stand the test of time.
- Making the blog post all about your opinion. Nobody cares about you. Use research, charts, and expert quotes to back up your argument, and create an interesting thesis. Not convinced? Witness the citations in the back of any Malcolm Gladwell book as evidence. And he’s Malcolm Gladwell. Yeah, it takes work.
- Underestimating how long it takes to write a good post. My post on Tim’s blog (see below) took over 18 hours to write. It sold hundreds of books in 24 hours.
- Including your affiliate links. Just don’t do it. In fact, if you’re linking to another Amazon book, you should add my Amazon code (see next bullet point) to make my life easier.
- Making me do additional work. When you submit the final guest post, it should be fully ready to be inserted into WordPress and it will just magically work. This means you should write your byline, format your post, add images on your own server (but also attach them to the email), and otherwise make it 100% ready to go. More on this here.
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