But bloggers like Maki took a different route and demonstrated that whilst guest posting has become the route-du-jour of blog growth, it isn’t the only way to do it.

For a while I experimented with guest posting, firstly as a challenge to test the strength and quality of my own writing and secondly to help promote the LIP blog as it grew. I have guest-posted at Problogger, Vagablogging, Zenhabits, Web Worker Daily, Dumb Little Man, Ririan Project and of course at Freelance Switch (most links should take you to my guest posts).

What did I learn? That it’s not easy and that actually, it can be pretty stressful!

Here’s what’s great:

• You get to connect with some really cool people who are happy to take the time to help out smaller, newer bloggers establish themselves.

• You do get traffic back to your own site – but how much of it sticks depends upon a couple of things: (i) What topic you guest-posted about on which blog and therefore (ii) How relevant your own blog content is to the people who visit your blog from your guest post.

• You get to really challenge and hone your writing skills on other peoples’ blogs which in turn has always helped improved writing on my own blogs.
• If you’ve got something useful, valuable or interesting to say that doesn’t fit on your own blog, guest posting is a great way to get it out there.

Here’s what’s not so great:

• Posting on blogs where the community can be harsh, volatile and impatient is stressful, particularly when your post receives criticism.
• I find it much harder writing for a blog where you don’t really know the readership like you know your own and you’re not sure how they’ll react to something you write; ideally the blog owner will edit where necessary and you should do your own research before writing the post.
• It is time-consuming – if you’re guest-posting on bigger blogs than yours, you obviously want to make a good impression. Crafting and honing a post can take ages, especially if you’re a new blogger, still developing your voice.

My tips for guest-posting:

1. Clearly identify your goals for guest posting: Is it to increase your traffic? To increase your subscribers? Is it to raise your profile? To give yourself more credibility? Is it to spread an idea? To generate interest?
2. Target the blogs you’d like to guest post at carefully; a few well-considered choices on some smaller blogs may hit your objectives far better than one guest post at a huge blog.
3. Find out how a blog owner prefers to receive guest post submissions before you steam ahead and write an article.
4. Do your research and look back through the archives: Check out what kinds of topics the blog covers, what their readers respond to and also what they may be missing. The chances of your idea/post being accepted are higher if you’re adding value to the blog that perhaps the blogger himself can’t provide.
5. Measure the impact that your guest-posting has on your site; did it help you achieve your objectives? Was it worth the effort? What would you do differently next time?

Where have you guest-posted and what did you learn from it?

Because I suspected the somewhat volatile commenting community might just shoot it down in flames and hurl personal insults at me. But with the exception of just one commenter who noted…

“The author sounds like a complete idiot who hasn’t done any real research on this matter.” LOL!

…the rest of the community had an intelligent, sensible discussion about an important topic. As for “real research”, I wonder if the fact that I outsource to two different people (one in the Philippines, one in the US) counts as real???

Some of the commenters had some valid points – outsourcing isn’t for everyone and I for one had always wondered just how a control freak (like myself) could bring oneself to let go of the reins and start letting other people do some important stuff in our business.

Here is what we outsource:

• Market research tasks like identifying and gathering potential prospects for the different solutions we offer.
• Technical build of some of the blogs we design for clients.
• Personal and LIP-related tasks like initial research for flights, hotel and other accommodation.
• More complex technical tasks we’re asked to do that we could figure out ourselves but it’d be time-consuming and not the best use of our time to do so.

The point is, we outsource a combination of things we can’t do ourselves (therefore enabling us to offer a better, more comprehensive service to our clients) and things we can do ourselves but choose not to (therefore enabling us to spend time on the things we’d rather do and the things we’re better at).

And for me, that’s the key to outsourcing for control freaks…identifying the *right* things to outsource that:

• You find boring
• You can’t actually do yourself
• You can just about live with not having to do yourself

I’m once again sitting in San Juan airport (for the third time this year) on a 4 hour layover taking advantage of the free wireless internet, sipping my first Starbuck’s moccha in 3 months and – guess what? – yes, writing again!

Just thought I’d round up some of the other posts I’ve written this past week on various blogs here and there…

Over on Rolf Potts’ Vagablogging there was “A Brief Guide On How To Use Social Networks To Stay In Touch Whilst Vagabonding“.

On Problogger there was “The 7 Unhealthy Eating Habits of Unproductive Bloggers“.

On Freelance Switch there was “How To Win Jobs On Freelance Job Bidding Sites”

What’s percolating in my writing pot right now? A super-duper post for Freelance Switch that I’m hoping will become an all-time classic – ha, I wish ;-)

A few weeks ago, I was featured on Web Worker Daily for their series of “From The Field”.

Today, Leo Babauta of Zen Habits has written a useful post about being location independent – he not only mentions me by name a couple of times, but also plugs the book and links to the Location Independent blog.

In a week or so, I have a guest post coming up on Darren Rowse’s Problogger and also with a bit of luck, another interview will be posted on Freelance Switch.

It’s all fantastic exposure and boy am I glad that I’ve really got my act together with the LIP blog (new custom-designed t-shirts and everything!!) and it’s looking just as I want it.

But above all, the whole blogging thing has been an interesting learning curve…and my writing has quite noticeably improved recently even if I do say so myself. Here is what I’ve learned about blogging…

1. A coherent and logical structure is vital.
   Rambling posts just don’t cut it and will lose you readers faster than you can say “blog” (which is very fast). Each post must have a beginning, a middle and an end. Some of my favourite structures are “list” posts such as this one and “process” posts such as “here’s a step-by-step guide to…”.
2. Self-indulgence is not a good thing.
   At least not for professional or semi-professional blogs which are also designed to help promote and market what you do. I’m very guilty of this on this blog, but then I now view this as more of a personal blog than a professional one, so it’s my prerogative to do what I want ;-)
3. Add value, add value and then when you’re done, add some more.
   Aaagh, a phrase from my old consulting days – “So how exactly does that add value?” – I never thought I’d hear myself saying it again but it’s just so true. The best blog posts are ones that add as much value to the reader as possible. Fear of giving too much information away is something that often holds people back from doing this but in my experience it is one of the most effective ways of keeping your readers happy.
4. Cut out the waffle.
   Again, something I’m guilty of but I’m trying hard to tighten up my own editing in posts and have recently found myself cutting out huge swathes of text because, on 2nd glance, it simply hasn’t added any value to the post.
5. It’s not all about the money.
   Despite saying in the last post, that next year is the “year of money”, I am not completely money-motivated (although I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing – whatever works for you). This is the approach I’ve taken on most of my blogs. I’ve only ever half-heartedly attempted to monetise any of my blogs using adsense, affiliate schemes and other ad revenue generators. Personally, I don’t believe ads on a blog make for the best user experience on a blog (which for me is really all about connecting with people and stimulating conversation) and making money from a blog was never the reason behind any of my blogs.
6. But you can earn money from a blog without adsense & paid links.
   Instead of monetising my blogs by littering them with adsense and affiliate banners, I’ve chosen a slightly different route and focused first on building up a community, off of which I can then promote and sell my own stuff. Things like my books and recommended tools for Digital Nomads.
7. What goes on off your blog is just as important as what happens on it.
   Whilst a pre-requisite for blogging success is great content, what happens off your blog is almost as important as what’s on it. Simply sitting at your desk and writing great posts is unlikely (at least in the short term) to get your blog noticed or generate much traffic. To do this, you have to be an active blogger off your blog too. Using a full range of social media tools, it is possible to drive swathes of traffic to your own site without having to pay for it using adwords or the like. There’s nothing like knowing your words are being read for motivating you to carry on…so get active off your blog as well as on it.

Am I aiming to become a “big time” blogger? Yes, I guess I am. I would like to have lost more subscribers on the Location Independent blog (not this one, it’s far too personal!) and I would like for it to be a really active community. For that to happen though, I still have a lot of work to do…