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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Wednesday, January 20, 2021

Do You Want Me As a Guest Blogger?

[Everything in italics will disappear soon. I'm currently having a formatting issue that has required me to rewrite and repost this entire article instead of just revise the existing one. 

This is article two of today's admin fortnight "bundle." You can go read article one, about blogging for ME, here.

IMPORTANT: This is a tab at the top of the page that usually goes unseen and un-responded-to for months at a time. I usually don't get asked to do blogging very often, and I am currently balls-to-the-walls busy, so I may not be able to take on extra work right now. If you ask in the next couple of weeks, I am likely to be very, very picky.]

You know, they say the best way for a blogger to get new readers is to have and do guest blogging. You expose yourselves to that writer's audience, who may then come to check you out. By the same token, any blogger writing on YOUR blog will likely bring several of their readers over to check you out. It's a little bit like those old chicken-pox parties––except with fewer awkward moments of parents trying to force the kids to play Twister.

"They" also say that guest blogging is so last year, and that today it's just about spammy spammers. I suspect that it remains useful to actual writers and less so to people trying to scam the internet for hits.

So we should totally try to poach each other's readers come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. I would love to have the chance to shamelessly steal provide another blog your readers might enjoy reading instead of as well as yours.

Though I currently maintain Writing About Writing, and have a second job wrangling smol children that kicks my ASS, with enough advanced notice I would love to do a guest post. If I'm unfamiliar with your blog, I'll probably want to check it out to make sure it's a blog I wouldn't mind associating my name with.


Here are some guidelines so we don't waste each other's time:

  • You should check out Not Writing About Writing if you want to see me flex my subject muscles a little. 
  • If you're big enough to pay your writers, but offering me only "exposure," you can kindly fuck off. Look around: I do enough free work as it is. I'd rather put in some unpaid hours improving my numbers than yours.
  • I do not do web content. Don't ask.
  • If you're too small to pay any writers, that might be okay depending on your exact situation. But I'm going to ask to be able to put one or two of self-promoting links in my article so that I can abscond with expose your readers to my work. And it will very much be on a case-by-case basis what I will be willing to do pro bono. (I totally work for trade though––see below.)
  • I hate to sound like a readership snob, but I'm clearing 50k page views a month, so if I'm mostly scratching your back, I'm basically doing work to promote you, and we'll have to noodle out some details that at least get me a scritch or two in that spot I can't reach. For example, if you have a much smaller readership, perhaps we can work out some sort of featured article where I post on both your blog and mine, but give you a few days head start.
  • If I can't really get behind your blog's philosophy, I'll probably take a pass. I don't have a hard rubric for this. I've guiltlessly written for publications with full nudity with a philosophy of enthusiastic consent, and I've turned down, without regret, opportunities to write for major national mainstream magazines because I don't like the beauty/fashion industry's promotion of unattainable beauty standards. If you think I'd probably absolutely appreciate your subversive take on the world, I probably will. If you think I'd probably definitely consider writing for you to be selling out, I probably will. If you think I will be impressed by how much of an edgelord you are, you're probably wrong. If you're in the gray area, ask.
  • I do not fucking do web content.
  • My writing is MINE (unless you pay a lovely fee which we can negotiate, but I freelance at $60/hr so it's not going to be couch cushion change). I understand SEO and content writing and that this is not an average request. I'm not going to undermine your blog by turning around and reposting a guest post somewhere else (including here), but I'm also not going to sign away the rights to my creative efforts unless you are paying me….just a SHIT-TON of money. 
  • I will tuck a copy of my work away. If your blog goes down or you just stop linking out my article because of age, I will repost it here. (I've learned this one from experience.)
  • I lied. I will totally do web content. You pay me a dollar a word, and I will write any web content you want. But unless you're ready to pay me a small fortune, seriously, I don't fucking do fucking web content!
  • You probably want to copy edit my work. I won't send you a rough draft or anything, but if I've taught you nothing in this blog, let it be that every writer needs an editor, and I personally am extra imperfect when it comes to my ability to proof my own copy. I'm getting better, but your blog's reputation will probably want you to at least make a pass for missing commas and homophones.
  • Whether you're paying me or you're "paying me" (cash, Funko Pops, favor exchange, lewds, whatever), I've been burned one too many times by "store credit." I don't necessarily need it all up front, but I won't do more than an hour of work before we set up some kind of first payment. 
  • I wasn't kidding about the web content thing.
  • If you've cruised around Writing About Writing and Not Writing About Writing, you probably already have a sense of the topics I would be excited about and which ones I'd scrunch my face up like you just told me the chips I was eating were made of beetle dung. I'm probably not going to be someone you want writing about SEO or typewriter maintenance, but if you want my take on literary analysis of a video game, how to set up social media for a modern writing career without feeling like you're spending too much time NOT WRITING, or how to find time to write with an infant in the house, I'm totes your guy.
  • And of course, I'd be happy to tweak something I've already written to fit into your blog if you want a slightly different take on an existing article.
  • Just please don't tell me not to use colorful language. I profane with all the colors of the wind.

Of course, if you have a print medium and you are interested in soliciting an article, all of this applies equally to print media. I just mostly exist in the e-pub world.

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