So, how do you feel about giving your best blogs posts away and have them guest posted somewhere else?

Not too sure?

Well you should as long as you aim to get them posted on a more popular and higher ranking site than your own, then it really is worth doing.

Why?

Many reasons really including:

• Increasing your profile

• The backlink from the higher ranking site

• Traffic. You are going to have a link in your post and that will bring traffic

• More opt-ins if you have a giveaway

• More people signing up to your RSS feeds

So, yes it is worth giving away your best articles as guest posts.

So how do you start to guest post?

1.  Make sure your article is totally original. If you think you can copy bits of other peoples articles, tweak a little and make it your own, you are wrong. The receiving blogger is going to check that it is unique using a tool like CopyScape.

And one more thing, it can only be posted on the receiver’s website. You can’t go and then submit it around a load of Ezines or even your own blog.

2.    I will say it, but it is obvious. Grammar, spelling all that stuff. Make sure you check and double check. Last thing you want is the receiver to dismiss your article because of some silly spelling error.

Of course, we all make mistakes and perhaps one error is fine, but not 4 or 5. If in doubt, get someone else to check it. I type fast and just write how I think, so I always get someone else to check my articles before I publish them.

3.    Don’t promote your site or add any affiliate in your article. That is definitely a no-no. Of course, you are going to have some sort of resource bio, like “This post was written by Andrew Rondeau who owns the blog with the catchy name, www.webuildyourblog.com” or something like that.

So you are proud of your post and raring to go.

Excellent!

About 3 weeks ago I wrote to 2 bloggers with my guest posts. Both politely replied and said, “No thanks. I’m not accepting any guest posts at this time”.

A little disheartening, but they did reply and they were polite. I bet a few bloggers don’t even reply!

But I thought, right. “I’ll show you!”

So I wrote to Darren over at the biggest Internet Marketing blog in the world, ProBlogger.net.

I know what you are thinking…

Why didn’t I write to Darren first?

Honestly – I didn’t think he would say, “Yes”.

Of course, I loved the article I was asking to be guest posted but here was the most ‘famous’ Internet Marketing blogger around. Why should he say yes to me?

I actually send Darren 3 articles to choose from – he must like one of them, I thought.

I loved all 3!

A few hours there was a reply in my email in-box.

There it was staring at me, all ‘bold’ because I had yet to open and read it.

I didn’t want to open it. I was scared. Why? It’s only a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, it doesn’t matter!

If he says, ‘Yes’, then that would be great.

If he says, ‘No’, then move on and try someone else. Persistence that’s what it takes, isn’t it?

But the little voice in my head was saying, “He’s gonna say ‘no’!”

I made a cup of tea for courage.

I opened the e-mail.

The man from ProBlogger – he says “YES”.

I put on my fav Michael Jackson song, “Beat it” and danced around the room.

Then I thought, right I must write a fantastic resource bio.

I deliberated for ages on what to write. I asked my wife. We look at what others had already written for their bios on Darren’s blog.

This is what we wrote, “Andrew Rondeau recently moved from his “corporate 9-5 job” to become a full-time blogger and internet marketer. Check out Andrew’s latest blog, we build your blog, and pick up his free blogging ebook.”

My wife and I deliberated so much over the bio, by the time we had sent it to Darren, the article was already posted!

So, last week was an amazing time for my little ol’ blog.

Here’s my post in all its glory: How to Build Credibility