When I tell my readers about the advantages of guest-posting on popular blogs, I often get a response along these lines: “A popular blog would never publish something I’ve written. I’m just not well-known enough.”

There are two things wrong with this response. Firstly, to say that a popular blog wouldn’t publish something you wrote is an assumption. You haven’t tried, so you don’t know.

The second flaw: “I’m just not well-known enough.” If you approach the blogger in the right way with a good idea, how well-known you are simply doesn’t matter. I wrote my first article for ProBlogger, a Technorati Top 100 blog, when I had less than 200 subscribers.

Bloggers aren’t interested in your profile. They’re interested in the content you can bring them.

In this post, I want to share the strategies I used to secure guest-posting spots at three Technorati Top 100 blogs (ProBlogger, Copyblogger and Zen Habits) without any prior contact with the owner. I don’t include that information to boast — I simply want to show you that these methods work. If they worked for me, they can work for you.

Photo by jurvetson

Why guest post on popular blogs?

Guest posting benefits you in two ways: it builds your niche profile and sends you traffic. The bigger the blog, the greater the benefits.

While you stand to gain much more when writing for a popular blog, you’ll also be faced with a few challenges:

• Popular blogs have a high editorial standard.
• They receive a lot of guest-post submissions, so you’ll be competing with many others.
• Popular bloggers have little time to spend talking you through the process.

The following tips are designed to make these challenges as manageable as possible.

Choosing where to guest post

Make a short-list of popular sites likely to be visited by your target audience. Rather than aiming for the top of your niche straight away, you might want to try to be published on the second or third most popular site, just so you have somewhere to go once you succeed.

Each blog has its own style of content. It’s important to pick one with a content style you have the ability to emulate. If what you write is too different to the kind of ’style’ the blog has established, it won’t be accepted.

Coming up with the perfect idea

Resist the temptation to come up with a low-involvement idea because you don’t like the thought of spending time on content for someone else’s blog. If your article is of a high quality, you get a number of benefits:

• More people will want to click back to your blog.
• If you want to guest post again in future, you’re likely to be instantly accepted.
• People are more likely to remember who you are.

When thinking of an idea, make sure that it fits into one of the blog’s topic categories, that it’s of interest to the blog’s target audience, and most importantly, that it’s something the blogger hasn’t written about before. Do a keyword search to narrow the chances that you’re repeating what’s already been said.

For inspiration, try looking at the blog’s list of popular posts, if it has one. Can you explore one of those ideas further? Can you put a unique twist on one of those formulas?

Gulp: pitching your post!

Don’t write the article before it’s been accepted. Sending the pitch and the article all at once requires the blogger to make a decision too quickly. They’re likely to file away your email and never get back to it.

Also, if your article is for some reason rejected, it might be difficult to find another place to publish it.

The idea pitch approach works because it requires only a light commitment from the blogger. It’s the method I’ve used to secure all my guest posts. As you’re writing your email pitch, keep these tips in mind:

• Be clear. Barring a short introduction, you should keep your email consistently on point.
• Be brief. Popular bloggers get so much email that they’ll file away anything that looks too hard to tackle. You really can’t be too brief.
• Sell your idea. Explain why it would work well for their blog.
• Sell yourself. Throw down a link to the best blog post you’ve ever written. Sell yourself as well as your idea. Let the blogger know you’re capable of something remarkable.
• Ask for minimum commitment. Don’t ask the blogger if they want to publish your post — that’s asking for too much commitment too early. Ask them if they’d be willing to simply look the post over if you write it. This might sound like a weak commitment, but I’ve never had a blogger who said ‘Yes’ to this refuse to publish the post after they’d seen it.

If you want some firmer guidance, here’s a simple template you can use:

Hi ____,

My name is ____ and I blog at ______. I would love the opportunity to guest post for your readers and I have an idea I think would go down really well.

The post would be about _______________. If that sounds good to you, I’d be happy to send along the finished post for your consideration.

Cheers,
______

Unless the idea is too similar to something the blogger has already written about before, or if it’s not well-suited to their target audience, the blogger will probably be happy to see what you come up with.

Once again, you haven’t asked for a final answer. All you’ve requested is that the blogger look over what you write. Once you reach this stage, your chances of being published are very high. At worst, the blogger might request that you edit the post.

Opportunities to look out for

There are certain situations which make a blogger more likely to accept a guest post.

1. If the blogger mentions they’re feeling sick. Offer to write a guest-post so they can get some rest. You will need to produce something quickly, though, as most people don’t stay sick for too long!

2. If the blogger mentions that they’re going on vacation. Usually this will be followed by a call for guest-posts, but once the call goes out, you’ll have heaps of competition. Get in early by making your pitch as soon as your targeted blogger starts to mention sandy beaches and palm trees.

3. If the blogger hasn’t been posting as much as they used to. Emphasize with their being busy and offer to take some of the load off. Most bloggers who haven’t been able to post consistently will feel that, to some extent, they’re neglecting their audience… making them all the more likely to publish a guest post.

And remember:

Those people who say that it’s impossible to write for a popular blog probably haven’t tried. Once you become confident enough to make your pitch, you’d be surprised at how easy it really is!

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Thank you Skellie for Writing this amazing post on Blog Perfume

ScratchBack is an online “tipping” system. It allows you, the publisher, to accept tips and “give back” links or images in return. You name your price on your tips, and you earn money from every interaction through our easy-to-use automated system. It’s free to sign-up, and you can have a TopSpot widget on your website or blog in minutes. Do not worry about the Google policy, because ALL links or images are hardcoded with a nofollow tag.

The tipper gets something in return. You ever see those boring “donate” buttons on people’s sites? Well, ScratchBack takes it a step further. Now, you can get someone to donate to your efforts, and they can get a little something in return.

The current commission structure has been switched to 90% for the publisher during this beta! It will be readjusted after the beta to a lower number, but still very fair and better than the 50% launch fee. Please stay tuned to the ScratchBack blog and their terms for updates.

Type: Donate System with Text Link in Return
Source: http://www.scratchback.com

Subscribe to Comments is a plugin that allows commenters on your blog to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments. It is one of the most popular WordPress plugins out there for the simple reason that it helps foster a community around your blog by encouraging commenters to come back and stay engaged in the dialog.

Features

• Rudimentary security
• Recognition of subscription status
• Themeable subscription manager
• Ability to let users change notification e-mail address
• Easy integration into comments form
• Subscription without leaving a comment
• Customization
• Internationalization

Pricing: Free
Requirements: WordPress 2.2+
Source: http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/

Thank you Adii that he has featured BlogPerfume on his 53 Top Blog Designs of 2007. All of them look really nice and I am sure you can get inspiration from looking at these amazing blogs. Most of them have some really nice content as well. Make sure you do not miss them.

Source: http://www.adii.co.za/2007/12/10/my-53-top-blog-designs-of-2007/

WordPress by default doesn’t come with any sort of web site reporting tools (and it really shouldn’t). So if you want to know how many people visited your site, which pages they viewed, or where they came from, you’ll need to either rely on your raw web logs or use an online tracking service provided by a third party.

Google Analytics and Feedburner Reports plugin for WordPress allows you to easily view your Google Analytics and Feedburner reports in your WordPress administration area. It adds a top-level Reports tab and when you click on it, you’ll get a quick 7 day overview of what’s going on with your site (pageviews, visits, referrers, etc). You’ll have to login to Google Analytics or Feedburner directly if you want more detailed stats.

Features:

• Provides you with a birds-eye view of what’s going on with your site
• Retrieves data from Google Analytics and Feedburner
• Reports are represented visually with graphs
• Choose the reports you want to view
• Ability to automatically install the Google Analytics tracking code for you, along with optional outbound link tracking.
• Includes a WordPress widget to display your most popular content.
• Automatically check for updates to the plugin

Pricing: Free
Requirements: -
Source: http://tantannoodles.com/toolkit/wordpress-reports/

FlickrRSS allows you to display Flickr photos on your weblog. The plugin supports user, public and group photostreams. It’s easy to setup and configure via an options panel. It also has support for an image cache located on your server. However, there is a limitation of using the RSS feed which only contains the most recent photos.

The plugin also supports a number of parameters, allowing you to have multiple instances across your site.

• $num_items - how many photos you want to appear
• $type - specify user, public or group photosream
• $tags - a comma separated list of tags (with no spaces)
• $imagesize - square, thumbnail, medium or large
• $before - html appearing before each photo
• $after - html appearing after each photo
• $userid - specify a user id (or group name)

Pricing: Free
Requirements: -
Source: http://eightface.com/wordpress/flickrrss/

Feed Analysis has been really successful in the past 2 days. First of all, thank you for all people who have published a post about Feed Analysis, I really appreciate. Special thanks to ProBlogger.net, JohnChow.com, Adesblog.com, Johncow.com. I have receive lots of traffic and helpful comments. With the help of FeedBurner API, Feed Analysis v1.1 is released.

You do not have to upload your CSV file anymore. You can just simply type in your feed address, for example, http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogperfume or just the name of your feed: blogperfume. You can also share your Feed Analysis Report to your advertisers and friends just by copying the url provided.

Feel free to try Feed Analysis v1.1 now. Thank you so much for all of you.

Rihanna is extremely lightweight, versatile and widget-ready for Wordpress 2.2+.

Pricing: Free
Requirements: Wordpress 2.2+
Source: http://www.kineda.com/rihanna/

The number of subscribers is very useful for bloggers to determine the popularity of their blogs. Yet, blogger like me may hope that the FeedBurner stats can tell us how fruitful our effort results without much analytical calculation on our own. As such, I developed Feed Analysis v1.0 which can provide bloggers, with the aid of beautiful interactive charts, a more detailed report and analysis from our feeds.

By the use of Feed Analysis, the number of subscribers for each month is neatly shown on the column chart. You can also view the number of subscribers, hits, views and clicks for every single day from the line chart. Of course, the best/worst day of the week is also available which is displayed on the pie chart. Feed Analysis can analyze FeedBurner feeds in no time.

Feed Analysis may not be complete and perfect at the moment because it is in an early stage. We need your opinions and suggestions so that Feed Analysis can evolve to provide more accurate stats and prediction. Any suggestions and opinions are welcome. If you have amazing formulas, please feel free to leave a comment or contact us directly.

Pricing: Free
Source: http://www.blogperfume.com/feed-analysis/

Small Potato has written a really nice article about “Premium Theme Buying Tips“. This article isn’t about not trusting your favorite free-theme author; it’s about protecting yourself and making sure your money will be well spent. I think buying themes can really save you lots of time, you can concentrate more on the content itself. Buying themes is a trend, and you just need to do it properly and worthwhile. Here are some of the tips of buying premium themes from WPDesigner.

• Do you recognize the theme author?
• Is everything within this theme…legal?
• What are the features and hidden options?
• Is there a FAQ and how’s the support?
• Is there a live demo or preview?

And More…

Source: http://www.wpdesigner.com/2007/11/27/premium-theme-buying-tips/