Writing Guest Content - What, How and Why?

Guest Post by Andy Walton

Last week, I wrote a guest post for this blog Money Maker Info about my site www.wikinut.com and the guest post was published to this blog audience. Writing content for other people has obvious benefits for them, but what are the upsides for you? So just one week on, I thought it would be interesting to assess what I gained from the exercise.

What to write?
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This is perhaps the easy bit, so I'll just offer 3 suggestions here:

1) Be original. By this I don't mean some new work of genius, I simply mean don't just cut and paste from another author. It shows little respect for site owners if you try to pass some obviously copied work off as your own.

2) Target your writing. Spend a little time browsing the site to which you are submitting. Get a flavour for the type of content they publish, the topics and styles. Try to tailor your copy to suit the site.

3) Write what you know. Stick to subjects about which you feel knowledgeable and comfortable. This will make the piece easier and quicker to write, and should make your post more readable.

How to submit your post?
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Find a contact address on the site, and if possible try to write a personal email to the owner or editor.

Explain the background to your post, what you are offering (free use to publish and modify) and what you expect in return (an author credit, a bio, a link to you site, etc).

Why should you bother?
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OK, this is the interesting bit. There are quite a few motives for offering content - ego, self-promotion - but mine was to raise the profile of my new site. Therefore, I wrote a page about how Money Maker Info blog readers could earn money writing content for Wikinut.

Primarily I was looking for exposure. So 7 days later, did I get any? Here are the stats:

1) A search on Google for the (unique) first sentence of my post returns 173 results.

2) This results are spread across dozens of different sites.

3) A Twitter search returns over 20 tweets directly referencing my article - never mind related tweets

4) And without giving away too much, the Make Money Online blog directly sent hundreds of motivated visitors - many of who signed up.

This demonstrates the power of the web - a single post can rapidly spread across the internet via a variety of methods and mediums. Remember, these results are just 7 days old. So why not think about guest writing yourself?

Author Bio:
Andy Walton, co-founder of Wikinut, has over a 10 years experience working for some of the UK's biggest ecommerce businesses. He's now inviting you to join www.wikinut.com, a new publishing platform that pays lifetime royalties for your writing on a massive range of topics."