Yes, I accept guest posts to share with my audience here at Blog Marketing Academy.

In order to streamline things and save time all around, I’ve compiled a few guidelines for you.

Please pay attention to this. These guidelines are here to save my time, as well as your’s.

As far as what you can and cannot send me…

• Your post must bring value to my readers. This means it has to be relevant, of course. Furthermore, it needs to bring something of value in an interesting way. We all know that blogs about blogging can easily fall into a trap of saying the same things over and over again. So, please, if you’re going to send me a post, make sure you bring a unique angle, unique personality… something unique which makes the post interesting. Blogging 101 level stuff that’s been said a million times already isn’t going to cut it.
• Your post shouldn’t be TOO basic. My audience doesn’t need to be told the obvious. Your guest post should be truly valuable and geared toward a smart audience. Seriously, I’ve had submissions before like “Top 4 Reasons To Use Social Media”. I mean, really?! Don’t waste my time. If you have nothing unique and interesting to bring to the table, don’t submit anything.
• Your post cannot be overtly promotional. It is OK to drop a link or two to your site, but your post shouldn’t be a blatant commercial for anything.
• Don’t Offer Writing Services. I know there are companies out there who provide writers-for-hire. I’m not even remotely interested. So, don’t use a guest post to tell me about your writing team who can write whatever I want, magically. Not interested. In fact, I’ll probably make fun of you publicly if that’s what you send me.
• SEO Backlinks? Beware! I understand that a lot of guest post writers are looking for backlinks. I get it. But, what I don’t want is some generic post which offers little value, and the obvious point of it was just to insert your keyword phrase into the thing. I’m not stupid. I’ve been doing this a long time and, let’s face it… I don’t need content bad enough to accept stuff like that. So, again, observe rule #1 above. Be helpful and unique. If you’re obviously putting more attention on Google’s search spider than you are my audience, your post goes right to the trash.

And now, a few procedural notes…

• Please do NOT contact me asking about what to write. Simply put, if you have a post in mind for me, write it and send it in for evaluation. But, please, do not email me asking what topics I want. I won’t answer you. As an alternative, you can send me a list of proposed topics and I might pick one. But, that’s not guarantee I’ll use the post.
• Don’t be boring. Write with the reader in mind, and realize that my audience is busy. If you want to get noticed, it has to be interesting and compelling, and written in an easily scannable way. Read this post about how to write for readers riddled with ADD.
• Think outside the box. Instead of a written guest post, consider a video just for my audience? Or if you think you’ve got something interesting for a podcast, hit me up and maybe I’ll bring you on as a guest.
• Make your post web-ready. Check for grammar and typos. If I have to correct too many stupid errors, I’m going to give up and not publish it. I’m no grammar nut, but I’ve gotten some real doosies before as guest posts. Just plain unreadable. Don’t be one of those people. Your job is to make it so that all I have to do is copy/paste your post into WordPress. The closer you can get me to that point, the better.
• Include your bio at the end. No more than 2-3 sentences.
• Your post must be exclusive. I don’t want to publish a piece you’ve posted somewhere else, even if it is your own site. Your post must be unique to Blog Marketing Academy. And, no re-spun stuff, either. Original only.

How To Submit

I used to have a form here where you could submit your guest post immediately. But, then what happened is some boneheads ignored the rules above and started sending me stupid stuff. And it just cluttered the system.

So, now, you can use the Contact Form and send your proposal into my support desk. From there, Dawn will field it for me.

What to Expect Next…

1. Your post will be drafted and first be reviewed by my assistant. Only once she verifies it meets my guidelines will the post go to me to see if I like it or not.
2. If your post is just obviously not a fit for this blog (i.e. it is boring as snot, too basic, offers nothing of clear value)… then it will be bypassed and we won’t bother notifying you. Nothing personal, OK? It is simply that we get a lot of people submitting garbage to us because they’re being paid to build backlinks for a client (most likely). And, with the volume, we’re just not going to take the time to notify people in those instances.
3. I cannot give you any kind of timeframe on when your post will be published. Various things can affect the publishing schedule on this blog, including any promotions I might be running.
4. While I will try to give you advanced warning of your post being published, realize that it doesn’t always happen. Nothing personal. I try my best.
5. When the post goes live, be prepared to monitor reader comments and reply to them on the blog.