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?