Tips For Guest Posting
Posted by Mitch on Mar 8, 2010
One of my goals for this year was to write more guest posts for other blogs. To that end, I’ve written some for my friend DeAnna Troupe, two of which have been posted, and one other that we’re still waiting for.
It occurs to me that there are both people who’ve never written guest posts for anyone else, as well as a lot of posts I’ve seen talking about the benefits of writing guest posts. There are few articles that give tips to writing guest posts, though I’ve seen a few. Here are my tips, some which I’ve seen mentioned before, others that I’ve never seen.
1. Try to write your guest post based on the topic of the person’s blog you’re writing for. If you write about digging clams and someone asks you to write on their blog about dog grooming, it’s probably best to turn that down unless you know something about grooming dogs. Someone else might like your writing style, but neither of you are going to get any benefit out of it. Take some time looking at the blog you might be guest writing for to see the topics they write on, then write something on that topic. I did that when I wrote a post for Connie Baum in January on internet marketing scams on her Healthy and Wealthy You blog.
2. Make sure you revisit your post at least the first couple of days to respond to any comments your article might have received. This one varies only slightly depending on how active a particular blog you write for might be. For instance, if you get to guest post on a blog that usually has lots of comments, it’s best to get back early to see what might be there and then address those comments. The reason why addresses tip number three.
3. Whether a blog gets lots of visits or not, leave some kind of comment at least within a couple of days. If a blog doesn’t get a lot of comments, you might miss if someone eventually does comment on a blog, and thus waste an opportunity to engage with someone new. Leaving and subscribing to comments gives you that opportunity. I always make sure to leave a comment whether there’s been anything or not.
4. Make sure you link back to your guest posts on another blog in some fashion on your blog. A great way to do it is what I’m about to do now, which I did last time, by writing something about it on your blog. For DeAnna’s blog, called Learn Small Business, the two posts that are there so far are Is There A Good Way To Market Your Business and Why A Business Blog. Go check them out; I’m sure she’d love the love, and I’d love the commentary.
One of these days I’m going to be asked to write a guest post on one of those blogs that gets tons of visitors. I’m not going to know what to do with myself on that day, but at least I know I’ll be writing on the proper topic.
Commentary On A Comments Post
Posted by Mitch on Mar 3, 2010
I was reading a guest post on Problogger titled 8 Reasons You Might Not Be Getting Many Comments, and as I read it, I identified with a couple of them, and found that I kind of disagreed with the other points. I figured I’d comment here rather than there, mainly because there are already 111 comments on that post, and I applaud the writer of the post, Charlie Gilkey, on responding to comments on his post, something you don’t often see guest bloggers going back to do (y’all need to be cautious of that).
If we set the bar at 500 words for what’s long and what’s short, I’d have to say that, based on my own blog, it depends on what someone is talking about. For instance, over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a few posts that were longer than that, and most of them got a pretty good response. I’ve also written a few short posts, and one of those only got a couple of comments.
I believe as long as you’re not droning over one thing without adding something new to it here and there, long posts are just fine. People tend to gravitate towards one or two lines they really like anyway if you haven’t bored them. And, the post Charlie wrote on this topic was pretty long, and it got 111 comments; case closed.
This one is interesting. If I asked at the end of every post “please comment”, I’d sound desperate. Actually, every once in awhile I do ask people what their opinion is, and I think that’s actually his point here. If you’re writing something pretty technical, you won’t get many comments, but if you offer an opinion, like I do here and there on this blog (kind of like this post), then asking people what they think makes sense.
This one seems obvious, and in this case there’s really not much to comment on because there’s nothing you can do to encourage those people to comment.
This is where we talk technical. One of my posts from awhile ago was talking about how to get Google Desktop to index Thunderbird. This is still one of my most popular posts, and it still gets comments. It never got the amount of comments close to how many people have read it, but it got some, and I know it helped a lot of people. I guess this is just something you have to deal with if you’re going to try to help people from time to time.
Here he’s talking about internal linking, saying that people will go off and follow your internal links to other posts without commenting on the original post. Do those people comment on the old posts if they follow it? I think this is an acceptable risk, because we all would like some of our older comment to be read, it’s great for SEO, and I think people who care will make sure to comment on one or both or multiples as they see fit.
This is an intriguing idea, and I’m not quite sure I believe this one. I doubt there’s a single person who follows my blog and me on either Twitter or Facebook who doesn’t comment. What I have seen, though, are people who subscribe to the email not commenting, instead writing me directly. I’m not sure I believe this one at all.
Hello! He’s speaking to, and for, the choir, or at least me on this one. How many times have I written about making it easy to comment on your blog? How many times have I castigated Disqus and Intense Debate and the like for wanting me to subscribe so I can see responses to a comment I’ve written? Heck, sometimes it’s hard to find the link that allows you to comment. And there’s a new trend where a few bloggers have some posts they’ll allow you to comment on, and others where they turn it off because they don’t want to hear your opinion on their opinion. Not sure where I stand on that one in general, but I know those are usually the posts I want to comment on, so I just don’t subscribe to those blogs because it’s irritating to me.
Once again, I have decided to take this one with a grain of salt. I have experimented this concept of posting at different times, and what I’ve realized is that it just doesn’t matter. It seems the email feed goes out late in the afternoon or evening anyway, and Twitter has folks on it 24/7, so there’s always an audience that’s seeing your post when you’re not around. Maybe 4 years ago time made a big difference, but not anymore.
And that’s that. Be sure to read Charlie’s post entirely, and of course I’d love to hear your thoughts on my commentary on that post. See, I’ve asked you to contribute! 
Wordpress 2.9.2; An Update You Can Probably Skip
Posted by Mitch on Feb 16, 2010
If you have a Wordpress blog, by now you probably have noticed that there’s another update, this time to 2.9.2. Unlike previous updates, this one corrects a minor security flaw that most of us really don’t have to worry about, so you can probably skip it. However, since I’ve mentioned that, I might as well gripe about it at the same time.
The security fix has to do with this new thing they added with 2.9 where, instead of just deleting certain messages, you can move them to the trash and then delete them from there. It seems that if you have people who log into your blog to do whatever, they can look at any messages that you have trashed. The concern is that if you trashed something because it was sensitive, you might not want anyone else in there.
Of course, I’ve kind of railed against having to sign into blogs to comment anyway, so in a way this penalizes those folks who have made people log in to comment; tough being you. As for what move to trash, the only things I move to trash on any of my blogs are when there’s a trackback and it’s coming from me from another blog I’ve linked to. I figure those don’t need to be there, and I’ve already taken care of not sending trackbacks to the blog I’m writing on because of the No Self Pings plugin I wrote about back in November.
My minor rant is against this “trash” thing to begin with. I’d like to know how many people have been going around deleting things from their own blogs, then suddenly saying “oops, I wish I hadn’t deleted that?” Frankly, it’s an extra step I hate having to do when I do it on those trackbacks. However, since they did that, why couldn’t they have added the one more option in their drop down menu to allow those of us who feel sure about what we’re getting rid of to delete at that point?
And one more thing. Have you noticed when you check your spam filter than if there’s something in there that’s really not spam, if you select Not Spam it moves it to your comments, but you still have to approve it? At least here the drop down menu does give you the option to approve the comment so you don’t have to touch it twice. Consistency can be our friend sometimes.
Anyway, skip this update if you don’t have people logging into your blog, or if you don’t ever plan on having anything sensitive that you don’t want anyone else to see in your trash.
by Paul Myers; check it out!
Insulting Spam
Posted by Mitch on Jan 28, 2010
You know, spam at best is normally irritating and nerve racking. These days, spam is taking on a new, direct approach that leaves me confused and wondering what some of these people are thinking.
I can’t be the only one seeing it, but spam comments are actually starting to get insulting. Since I usually delete stuff pretty fast, I haven’t been charting a lot of what it’s been saying lately. However, I thought about it enough to save the last two examples:
“Even though this is very interesting, I don’t think I could agree with you completely.”
“Seriously? Don’t get me wrong, I’m in agreement with you partially, but when you say something like this you actually have to be ready to defend it.”
Many of you are probably seeing the same kind of thing these days. I know that because I visit a lot of blogs, I see a lot of them that have both positive and negative spam comments on them, and the owners of those blogs either thanking the people for their comments or arguing with these spam comments. Sometimes I find that fascinating, and other times I find that pretty sad. Maybe it’s because I’ve been on the internet for long time that I can tell it’s spam, but sometimes it just seems so pathetic seeing people trying to argue with something that’s been automatically generated, thus isn’t real.
Not that spam has any redeeming value to begin with, but I keep trying to figure out what possible motivation the people who send this stuff out have in being either rude or in attack mode. Most people don’t respond well when they’re being attacked, and when it comes to their blogs people are more apt to delete rude comments than to keep them around. My thought has always been that I don’t mind if people don’t agree with me as long as they keep a certain amount of decorum. I’m not going to allow bad language, and I’m not going to allow name-calling much beyond calling someone a jerk as long as there’s an explanation behind it. I figure it this way; I pay for it, my name is attached to it even if I’m not really a part of the conversation, and I’m not letting it stay.
I guess this is just the next stage of spam trying to find a way to seem as realistic as possible. I hope those of you who read this blog aren’t falling for this kind of thing all that often.
Post #601 – Time For More Changes
Posted by Mitch on Jan 5, 2010
Wow, 600 posts, and I’m still going relatively strong. I didn’t quite hit the date I had expected to hit when I wrote post #501, but I’m close to that date, and I feel good about where I am, so it’s all good.
When I wrote post #500, I said I was going to start being a bit more personal on this blog, and it seems that I have been. It’s translated to more visitors, which makes me feel like it was the right way to go. Here were my top 5 topics for the last 100 articles:
Personal – 10
Product – 8
Entertainment – 7
Research – 6
It’s the first time entertainment has shown up on my top lists, but I enjoy those posts, though they take the longest to do, what with my looking for videos and products to shill. It does seem to be true, however, that list posts get a lot of attention, even if not always a lot of commentary. This leads to the topic of my most popular posts during the time period, and once again, most of the most popular were posts written beforehand. As a matter of fact, one that’s popped out of nowhere was written in April 2008! Here they are, and, for a change, when they were written:
Top 100 Singers Of All Time 272 visits, 01/2009
Wordpress 2.9 Upgrade; My Issues 120 visits, new!
Watch Out For Secret Shopper Scams 119 visits, 4/2008
Visa Black Card 117 visits, 3/2009
Isn’t that incredible? I wonder what’s going on that so many people still need help with that older stuff. Next, my most commented on articles during the last 100 posts:
Trying To Understand Squeeze Pages – 40
Beyond Blogging – 36
It Pays To Be Bad Sometimes – 32
Limit Login Attempts – 31
Those are the stats I wanted to share with you. I could look at plenty more, but I want to go in a different direction, to let you know what’s coming.
I don’t make money off this blog; that doesn’t mean I can’t. However, what’s a bit more important is streamlining a few things and promoting some other things better. So, here’s what’s coming, if I haven’t already made the changes when you read this.
A lot of the banner ads are going away. I’m probably keeping the one at the top and maybe one on the side, but that’s it. My hope is that some of my remaining real estate will look like a prime place for advertisers at some point, but initially it’s going to clean up the page a little bit. The books are going to remain, but I might repackage how they look on the site, if it fits.
I’m going to add an area where all the products or things I positively review will be listed, with a link to that review. I think those things deserve to be sitting out here more prominently, especially a product like Mailwasher. Usually when we write about these things they only remain prominent for a short period of time, then get lost in the abyss of newer posts. That seems like a smart business move.
I’m also probably going to add back Google Adsense to this blog, which I removed a long time ago. I’ll probably go with a smaller ad than that long one I’ve had before, just to have something here. If people are looking for topics I hadn’t thought about before on this blog, maybe they’ll be the ones who’ll find what they’re looking for on Adsense, right?
And some of the “trinkets” things to the right I’m probably going to remove as well. Not all of them, but some, like the one presently saying my blog is ranked #254 on Winning the Web, will be gone, mainly because if you click on it and go to their site, it pops up this book thing that sometimes won’t go away even when you hit close, and if it’s irritating me then it will probably be irritating others as well.
I appreciate every one of you for checking in with me from time to time, and I hope to find even more things that add value to your online or offline experiences. Most of all, I want to be at least someone entertaining; nothing worse than a lot of boring stuff. Now, it’s still my blog, which means I’ll put on here whatever I want to put on here, but it doesn’t mean I might not entertain thoughts here and there; just be ready for me to debate you on them.
Onward and upward, as we head towards #700.
Clearing Away Irritations In 2010
Posted by Mitch on Jan 2, 2010
Back in September on my business blog, titled Mitch’s Blog, I wrote a second post on the topic of tolerations. The original post on that topic was only about a paragraph long, so I wanted to boost it up some more. On that post there’s a link to a pdf file called 1001 Tolerations, which pretty much means things we put up with instead of getting them out of our lives and making us feel better about things.
Well, this is a new year, and I think it’s time for me to clear some things out of my life that have been irritating me in some fashion. Actually, most of us should think about doing that from time to time because we all tend to allow certain things to drag us down, even if it’s only occasionally. For instance, you have someone who you call a friend, yet you avoid them because they bring you down whenever you talk to them. All they talk about is themselves and their problems; they never ask you how you feel or even listen when you try to talk; it’s all about them.
I don’t have anything like that in my life, but I do have some things that I will be eliminating. One is going through my email address books and eliminating anyone who hasn’t responded to anything I’ve sent in at least a year. I think that’s not a bad place to start, but I might even go back further than that; I’m not sure yet. I go through my email all the time, and I see these email addresses of people I send stuff to that never write back. I tolerate that, but no more; they’re gone. Well, kind of gone; I’ll save the email addresses in a file, but at least I won’t be seeing them anymore.
Two, remember my post against Disqus? Well, I’m now resolving that any blogs I’m following that has Disqus on them, or any other blogs I go to that send me a message saying I have to subscribe to find out if someone has commented back to something I’ve commented on, I’m deleting from my blog reader and moving on. Any new blogs I come to that has Disqus I’m not even reading. Now, I know some of you have it on your blogs, and if I like you, I may not delete the blog, like our friend Peter; we go back a long way after all. But Peter, sorry, I’m not commenting anymore because I hate getting that email every time asking me to subscribe.
Three, I’m going through all the blogs in my reader and I’m going to make sure I’m following people who are talking about stuff I really care about. Also, I’m going to drop anyone who hasn’t written a post in 3 months. And, while I’m doing that, I’m going to find the time to get to Twitter and release people who I started following a long time ago, who either aren’t talking anymore or aren’t talking about anything I care about. I follow nearly 1,400 people, and I’m not going to say that’s too many, but I am going to say that I do listen to a lot of folks, rather follow a lot of folks, who aren’t really talking to anyone, but instead are always selling. Twitter isn’t supposed to be a one way conversation, just like blogging isn’t supposed to be a one way conversation either.
You know what? At a certain point, we all deserve to have more positivity in our lives. And sometimes, heck, all the time, it’s up to us to make our own happiness and get rid of those things that help to make us unhappy. It’s time for me to do that; what about you?
The Fine Line Between Blog Visitors Success And Failure
Posted by Mitch on Dec 22, 2009
For the past two years, I’ve wondered one big question over all others; what is it that makes one person get thousands of subscribers versus someone getting a hundred.
It’s an interesting question to look at because, though we know that traffic that’s meaningless isn’t supposed to mean all that much, the truth is that traffic really is the key to everything.
If you want to make money you want traffic. If you want readers to see you as an authority on something so that you’re asked to go and speak to others in person and make money off it, you want traffic. If you’re looking for some kind of validation that you’re words are communicating with anyone, you want traffic.
Something I do that I’m sure others do from time to time is check out what some of the top bloggers are saying or doing that seems to be working for them, then compare what they’re doing with what you’re doing. Hey, you know it’s true.
In my mind, I don’t see lots out there better than what I do. I do see some things much different. I see some people write some fairly technical stuff, but not as many of them. I see some folks who write a lot of nothing and rank better than I do, and I’m not sure how that happens. I see some of the big time bloggers who may write only half the time, allowing others to guest post on their blogs. Heck, I allow that myself, but I don’t have a lot of people who take me up on it.
So, what really makes the difference? I think it has more to do with having some bonafides when it comes to whatever it is you do. For instance, John Chow is a guy who’s made a lot of money online. Truthfully, he’s made a lot of money offline as well. People know that, and it gives him a built in audience before he says word one.
Darren Rowse is the same. When you look at her early stuff you see that he had few commenters. But somewhere along the way he broke through, got advertising, was able to show that blogging could make someone a millionaire, and that was that.
Y’all see this book I’m helping to promote, Beyond Blogging, there to the side. Well, every person in that book is a 6-figure a year blogger. Some of those six figures are more than $500,000 a year. Even if those guys didn’t try to make money by blogging, they’d be making some money from blogging.
I’m not mad at anyone who makes a lot of money blogging. Heck, I’m not mad at anyone who makes a lot of money at anything. What I am, though, is wanting the knowledge to figure out how these folks do what they do. It’s not that they all help each other out. It might have been at one time, but no one would have helped anyone if they hadn’t shown something beforehand.
Also, there’s something about participating in the entire blogging community. The way I believe I’ve helped my subscriber number grow is by commenting on other blogs. There are a lot of new people visiting that I might never have met if I hadn’t visited their blogs. Okay, a big ups has also come from both Sire and Kristi in the last month, so I have to give them some big things as well. But I really believe subscribing to lots of blogs so I have something to comment on has helped greatly.
Commenting on other blogs might provide that big difference between success and failure. Things like running a contest might get you a blip, but most of those people won’t stay beyond the first entry. Truthfully, other than finding not only a niche that will bring a lot of visitors but also finding a way to stand out, I can’t think of anything other than commenting on other blogs that will help generate visitors to come to your blog. Well, maybe writing 10 posts a day; I don’t see that happening any time soon.
What do you think about all of this? Share your thoughts on the topic, and let’s see if we can come up with solutions.
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