You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “We do not do paid or guest posts—here’s why”.
You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “We do not do paid or guest posts—here’s why”.
Back in 2012 to 2014, I had a finance blog that was doing well (I started it years before those time periods and ended way after). Then I got a traveling gig, and I realized that it was more tiring than I expected it to be (I was in my early to mid 50s), and since I had 3 other blogs at the time, I just couldn’t keep up with all of them.
So I started allowing “paid” guest posts, and didn’t take the credit for any of them. The only caveat I had was that the content had to be geared towards an American audience (they also had to answer any comments). I generated “okay” money, but ended up having to edit at least half of what I allowed. The money was never big compared to what I was earning, but the outside content allowed me to write occasional posts of my own without losing my audience.
It was a mixed bag to be truthful. When I had the time to edit some of the articles, the extra money was nice, but when I didn’t, I wasn’t happy with what I was allowing. But I didn’t charge close to what you mentioned, and maybe that was something I should have considered… or I should have just shut down that blog because I was spreading myself thin (I was writing 2 other blogs for other people). It was fun until it wasn’t; what a life it was! lol
Thank you for sharing your experience, Mitch. I’m glad you made a few bucks off these people—the least they can do given that they will never know your brand as well as you do. You are so right that their contributions need to be watched. We had one guy approach us, more professionally, with some finished articles, and he was the one person who slipped through over at Lucire a long time ago, even though I knew what his game ultimately was. (We subedit, and the links made it pretty clear.) That only ended when his last article was so far off the mark and when I pointed that out and asked him to rewrite, the result was still really poor. That was the end of that because he just couldn’t deliver at that last occasion. I then removed all his old stuff, maybe about four pieces in amongst thousands online. Thank goodness that Google didn’t punish you for selling anchor text back then.
It definitely pays not to spread yourself too thinly. I hope you were reasonably compensated for those other two blogs.
At that time I was up to 5 blogs, but that’s the only one I allowed paid posts from others. I was a royal mess, but learned a valuable lesson.
Really happy to know you’ve come out of that! I still remember spreading my stuff too thinly—I had this blog, but I also had one on Vox (for personal stuff) and Tumblr (mostly graphical). Eventually Vox died but briefly, something called Blogcozy came up, then NewTumbl, as de facto successors. They have both since died. After all those diversions, I am back to this one space for blogging. Nothing beats having your own space and full control.