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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?

Friday, March 21, 2014

Do You Want a Guest Blogger?

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 a whole new audience who may come 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 it's useful to actual writers and less so to people trying to scam the internet.

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, an 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:
  • 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's 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.
  • 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 day's 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 where enthusiastic consent was a vociferous philosophy, and I've cheerfully turned down opportunities to write for major national mainstream magazines before because I don't like the beauty/fashion industry's promotion of unattainable beauty standards. If you think I'd probably appreciate your subversive take on the world, I probably will. If you think I'd probably 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.
  • 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 $50/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 lied. I will 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, 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 don't tell me I can't drop the fucking F-bomb.

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.

5 comments:

  1. Hum-mm. Would you be willing to work strictly from a title/question? I have a post I've been working on for a while. Nah, probably not worth your time. My blog remains in the single digits.

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    1. That is pretty small, but if you want to do something like a "featured article" where I write the piece for you and give your blog a couple of day's "head start" on running it before I put it in my own blog, that might work for me. You've been a wonderful reader, so I'm more inclined to figure something out if you're serious.

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  3. Would you be willing to do an exchange? Like I write a blog for you, you write one for me? I have a month old writing community (so on the smaller side) but feel like your contribution to helping writers with social media is invaluable - which is what a lot of my members are looking for help with! All of this is completely reasonable though. I read your FAQ's and laughed quite a few times.

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