Guest Posts make about 15% of our monthly income. For us that’s not to be neglected. That’s simply because we need every dime at the end of the month (or at the beginning of the next one, so to say). I mean, we can live from our website, but it’s “just about.”
But Guest Posts (or Sponsored Posts, if you like) are a tricky, dubious, weary thing. Quite some businesses and SEO Marketeers (SEO = Search Engine Optimization) like to place an article on our website because we have some Domain Authority (DA) or Page Authority (PA). DA and PA are Search Engine ranking scores that predict how likely a website is to rank in Search Engine Result Pages (SERP).
Now, by placing articles on our website that contain links to other websites, which means articles that link to information, discounts or offers, it’s thought that it will give those other websites “more spin” and — as it’s called in SEO jargon — more “link juice.”
They don’t want to publish articles on our website because we have a million visitors per month. No, we receive only about 50,000 unique visitors per month. Nonetheless, that does’t matter, because it’s about Search Engines — like Google and Bing — who “follow” links in articles, and when a site mentions a link to another site it’s assumed by Search Engines that the site which is pointed to is of “some importance.”
That again means that when you look for a certain keyword through a Search Engine, like for instance “Omega-3 Fish Oil,” the Search Engine would rank sites with plenty so-called “backlinks” from other sites higher in their search results, which means more “clicks” (or “taps”) and thus subsequently more sales.
So, that’s the game. Nonetheless, we only accept Guest Posts with full disclosure. It means that we “tag” Guest Posts as “sponsored,” so that both our visitors and Search Engines know that it’s a paid article and a paid link. That again means that we get a lot less articles offered than that we would want to because many (if not most) companies and SEO Marketeers don’t want to disclose at all.
Disclosure would mean that Search Engines would decide (on various criteria) if the link mentioned in an article is worth following. Therefore, a company that places a Guest Post with us cannot be sure if it will give them any results. So, that’s it.
In fact, it’s a bit of a Wild-West out there, and using manipulative linking practices is a very common strategy. Luckily, not everybody goes for what’s called “dofollow links” and we can still publish between 3 and 5 articles per month with full disclosure.
Yet, it’s not only about dofollow or nofollow external links, it’s also about people offering us articles that have nothing to do with our site (which is the majority of marketeers). Like articles about bitcoins, games or gambling, and such. We refuse those, even if they offer more money to publish them. And moreover, we receive too many articles that are badly written, even if they cover the topics we accept. It’s a drag.
Another thing is that SEO Marketeers always try to bargain on the price. There’s a lot of mail exchange going on before you get an honestly disclosed and reasonably well-written Sponsored Post for the price you want, and actually — in most cases it’s lost time for us.
It’s a burden. We need it, we need Guest Posts, and actually we don’t want them because of the hassle. You see, we receive about 5 to 10 requests per day (150 to 300 per month), and only 3 to 5 of those requests in a given month result in a placement. Imagine that, and imagine the time we spend on communication. I figure it’s about an hour per day we spend on it, at a minimum.
But then … it is what it is. And for now, well, we have no choice and we simply need to “follow.” Yet, our policy is to keep being sincere to ourselves and not to sell our souls by accepting unrelated or badly written articles just for the money. What’s more, you can even get “punished” by Search Engines because they don’t like non-disclosed third-party articles and links on a website.
The “punishment” — and it is a real punishment — could be that Search Engines would not show our site’s articles, or much less. As a result of that, our Domain Authority and Page Authority would go down. The irony of that would be that nobody would be interested in placing Guest Posts with us, besides the fact that we would have a hard time selling our eBooks and Video Workshops.
