How NOT To Ask For A Guest Post On Somebody’s Blog (6 Fun Examples)

When it comes to trying to build traffic and backlinks, many people turn to guest posting. Problem is, asking for the blog post can be awkward. And some people just outright make fools of themselves.

As you might imagine, I get a lot of guest blog requests here at the Blog Marketing Academy. And while I used to occasionally publish posts written by other people, today I pretty much never do it.

Guest posting used to be a popular way to build traffic. Back when it was more of a novel thing and people who took content seriously were doing it. There are still a few places where good, solid guest posts are published, but it is usually because the site owner holds to an extremely high level of quality control.

On the whole, however, guest posting as a strategy has become more mainstream and that means it has been polluted by lazy people and spammers.

In fact, on the whole, guest posting has become, quite literally, a spam game. Spam is a game of numbers. Buy a million email addresses, spam ’em with viagra ads, and a few of them are stupid enough to act upon the ad. If it is profitable, you keep churning and burning. It is those who are stupid enough to buy from a spam email that keep the industry going.

Guest posting has become a spam game, too. A company wants to build up traffic and backlinks, so they’ll go out and seek guest blog opportunities. They’ll use a form email generator along with a database of blog URLs, names and emails… and they just blast the internet with these form emails. And some blog owners are stupid enough to say yes.

These form emails use a lot of the same buzz phrases and telltale signs. Such as:

• “High quality content”
• “100% unique”
• “Free of charge” or “100% free”
• They’ll have your domain in the email, often with the http included.
• “All they ask” is a link in the author bio.

I mean, it is a big freakin’ joke, really.

6 Fun Examples Of How Not To Ask For A Guest Post

When I get these emails, I usually just get a giggle out of them and then delete them. But, lately, I felt like I was getting more of these things. So, for giggles, I searched my Gmail account for the usual buzzwords. Words like “100% unique” or “high quality”.

I pulled out 6 of these things. And I decided to have some fun and post ’em. 🙂

Notice the telltale signs and buzzwords like “high-quality”, “100% unique article”, “free of charge”. And the email is coming from GlobalCorpmail.com, which is an email list company. Obviously, this isn’t personal.

Same crap. Next…

Don’t know what happened to Income.com. This site used to be owned by John Reese, and it is a killer domain. But, John sold it and left the online marketing niche. And apparently it isn’t being used for anything worth a crap now. I even replied to this email to ask him about that, but not surprisingly, I got no reply. Because its not personal.

This is getting repetitive, no? Same “content for blogmarketingacademy.com” subject line. Same common ending of “I appreciate your time anyway!” And, man, GlobalCorpEmail.com… you must love spamming clients. Next…

Wow, no cost to me?! I’m in! 😉

And, it is SO believable how impressed he is with my content. Just sayin’. Its the way he copy/pastes my domain in the email. Just makes me feel appreciated.

Lastly, let’s end off with a special one…

You know it isn’t spam when they tell you it isn’t spam. Especially when they copy/paste my domain, have the word “links” in their email, and then tell me to disregard if I got the message more than once. Yep, no spam there!

But, beyond that… this guy really went out of his way to blow smoke up my butt. All the while asking me to post something about “reliable home security”. Because if there’s anything the Blog Marketing Academy is known for, it is home security products. I mean, he says himself he loves my content and thinks it is “so great”. All those reviews I’ve done here about home security systems, you know. They ARE awesome. 😉

Don’t Be These People

They might be good people in real life. Perhaps they hired an outside company to build links for them and they’re unaware of the stupid crap those companies are doing.

But, this is the kind of laziness which poisons the well and brings the overall quality of the internet down.

Spamming bloggers to find those dumb enough to post your content isn’t the way forward. Plus, do you actually think Google doesn’t notice? These same people would be emailing me in a few months asking me to REMOVE their links to avoid penalty. There are actually companies you can hire to go out and get links REMOVED. So, you’re the moron who hired a company to build these low quality backlinks, then you’re going to hire another company to go undo the damage.

So, quit the crap. Let’s be real.

Despite all the spam and noise now, the concept of guest posting still works. But, guest posting for the purposes of backlinks is a fool’s game. The reason to guest post is for exposure to the audience of another blog who is PERFECT for what you’re doing. And, that guest post has to be freakin’ awesome.

A good guest posts takes a lot of time. It should be even better than you’d write for your own site. And you should be laser focused on who you contact about posting it. If you’re doing this right, it is NOT a numbers game. It is a relationship game. In fact, done right, you wouldn’t even need to send a blind request for the opportunity. You’d already know the blog owner and have a relationship with them, and they would probably invite you to guest post.

A solid guest posting strategy is more quality over quantity. It is done strategically for the purposes of branding and getting in front of the perfect audiences.

If you’re not willing to do it right, then don’t bother. Not only are you not contributing to anything, but you’re actually hurting your own business. It is just a stupid thing to do. You’d be a lot smarter just to engage in some paid traffic to get your content out there.

But, if you want to keep trying to hack the system, or keep spamming these things out, well… feel free to send ’em my way. I’ll screenshot them. And I’ll add them to my wall of shame. Its a little pastime of mine.