When it comes to blogging, when you start guest posting will determine how fast you can succeed with your business. No matter where you turn now days, you will find loads of people, myself and Ileane included, talking about how guest posting is a great way to build your blog traffic, especially if you are brand new.

But, I got a question the other day about when to start guest posting. How much content do you really need, and how much harm can you do to your site by guest posting too early?

Generally, I find that when people ask a question like this, there are a lot of others who have the same thought, but never say anything, so I thought I would explore this today, and talk about when to start guest posting.

“How Much Content Do You Need?”

Although you can get some traffic with little content on your own site, most sites simply won’t let you guest post if you don’t have any content up yet. I would recommend getting at least 15-20 pages of content on your site before you try to do a guest post.

However, I have gotten guest posts before with a 3 page site, so you don’t HAVE to have that much. A lot of that will depend on the guest posting guidelines of the blog you are guest posting on.

Networking Helps You Start Guest Posting

I just started up my new Relationship Marketing Conversations Blog, and don’t have a whole lot of content on it yet. I have about 6 posts as of writing this, plus a few pages in the background. The main purpose for that particular site is to host my members area where I am working on developing some of my own products. The blog is mainly just to drive people into the members area as well as updating members with news related to the niche.

However, because I have spent 2 years networking with people in the niche, and I have a lot of contacts already, I was able to start guest posting early on. I just did my first guest post over at Attraction Marketing Online, where I discussed How to Get Traffic From Product Owners, and it is leading some really great traffic into my new site already.

So far, it is doing Amazing. I got a ton of free traffic to my new blog within the first day of the post going live, and a lot of new leads.  It also is helping me with incoming links to my blog, both from the post itself, and the CommentLuv links in the comments.

But, I wouldn’t have even been invited to guest post if it wasn’t for the relationships that I had built through networking.

Join Guest Blogging Contests

When I started guest posting, I started by joining a contest. I didn’t do all that well, but part of that was because I was trying to build my following. I didn’t have one in place to promote my contest entry for me.

However, that contest led me to more guest posting opportunities, as well as helping me build my email list and my reputation. The good news is that there are loads of contests going on all the time, you just need to look around and find them.

Often, even if you aren’t blogging in the IM niche, guest posting on a few of the contests about blogging will help you get exposure with people in the business. Although they won’t necessarily be relevant leads for your site, they can be beneficial because you can make contacts with other bloggers who ARE in your niche. These bloggers can help you start guest posting on relevant blogs!

Also, you never know how you will do. I had an entry in a contest that got me $ 100 in cash just for writing a post and sharing it on a few social sites. Even with my small following, I was able to make a little cash. I didn’t put on airs, or try to be a blogging expert. Instead, I just shared some of my own insights based on the limited experience that I had at the time.

“Does It Hurt You To Start Guest Posting Too Early?”

This is a really popular question that almost all of my consulting clients ask me when I start discussing guest posting.

Really, it will depend on how your site is set up. Whenever I start a new site, my focus is to build an email list first. I usually set up an autoresponder with at least 1 weeks worth of emails and an opt-in giveaway before I do anything else. A simple squeeze page is all I generally set up with a brand new site before I start promoting it. Later, I will set up a blog and start posting regularly, once it has had some time to age a little.

If you have your opt-in funnel set up, and provide a good reason for people to sign up, you can build your list pretty quickly through your guest posts.

However, if you just send them to a site with a few articles and heavy advertising, you can damage your reputation. In fact, this is where most people (especially those building affiliate marketing sites) go wrong.

You might get a few sales, but you will drive most people away.

Instead, focus your efforts on list building and creating a relationship of trust and value with your new leads first. This will get you a steady flow of traffic that not only read your post once, but come back time and time again to see what you have to say.

Overcome the Fear of Rejection

Guest posting can be really hard on you if you fear being told “NO!”, especially with a new blog. Many people will not want to share your new blog if you have little content, or no name within the industry. However, the more you try, the more chances you will have to succeed.

Learn to take rejection as a way to improve yourself, and get over your fear. If you just keep trying, start networking with the right people, and get involved with other bloggers, you will find that you get a lot of benefits for yourself and your blog.

Don’t hesitate to get your blog seen in your niche. Start guest posting today, and start seeing the results that it can bring to your business!

Post titles are extremely important. While a great title can make a lot of people read the post, a poor title may prevent a post from ever reaching its full potential. Let’s examine some of the types of post title, along with their pros and cons.

The Attention-Grabbing

Fictional Example: “75% of Bloggers Eat Pie Daily”

An attention-grabbing title is often used by news sites to summarise a story quickly. Interested readers will click through to read more, but even if they don’t, they will usually get the gist of the story without clicking through.

A major benefit of writing attention-grabbing titles is that they do what the name suggests: they grab people’s attention. However, if your content has little substance and simply reiterates what the reader already knows from the title, people won’t bother reading to the end of your posts.

The Cryptic

Fictional Example: “The Number 1 Method For Getting Noticed on Twitter”

The title doesn’t give everything away – it simply gets people interested enough to click through. Then you reveal all in the post. You don’t have to take too long for the big reveal – in fact, it’s more of a question and answer type affair. The post often starts out by revealing the scoop, before providing a more detailed explanation.

This can be a really clever way to get people interested without giving too much away in the title – but it can annoy readers if it’s seen as a ploy to get them to click through to some sub-par content.

The Informative

Fictional Example: “5 Tips For Using Twitter”

A title that is clear about the post it heads up, without trying to dress it up with fancy words. It isn’t trying to be clever nor is it attempting to draw people in under false pretences.

A benefit of an informative title is that it can feel more natural to readers. The main drawback is that it simply doesn’t stand out enough. With so many blogs out there, you need to stand out.

The Vague

Fictional Example: “Thoughts For The Day”

The problem with a vague title is that it doesn’t tell you anything about the post. It may not matter to loyal readers who keep up with your blog every time you post. But it’s not much good for attracting new readers.

In some cases, perhaps you couldn’t think of a suitable title for the post. If that’s the case, it’s still worth attempting to come up with a title that says something about the post, so readers know what to expect. If you’ve just written an awesome post, a vague title means you’re selling yourself short.

The Over-Optimised

Fictional Example: “Killer Search Engine Marketing Content For SEO Specialists, Content Marketers And Bloggers”

The example sounds more like the name of a blog than the name of a post. I’ve seen post titles that are stuffed with keywords, that repeat themselves, or that are really long. The end result is a title that’s difficult to follow, generic, and in some cases, completely meaningless.

By all means target the keywords you wish to rank for – but don’t do this at the expense of readability.

Pitch Your Titles Carefully

Writing compelling content is essential, but choosing a suitable title will make the difference between someone clicking your link or simply ignoring it.

Discussion

Which of these titles have you tried? Which have the best results?

Image credit: “I Win” by Kevin Labianco

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It’s important for us to have incoming links from around the internet pointing back to our blogs and websites. Google and the other search engines use this as a barometer to measure the importance and value of our content. As time goes by, and we start to accumulate more and more quality incoming links we’ll see a direct correlation to the rise in the amount of traffic coming to our sites from Google as well as the other search engines.

Tools To Track Incoming Links

There are many tools we use to track our incoming links and we can even track links to other websites if we want. There are days with I use a tool called Market Samurai which is well worth the investment and if you want to take a test drive you can sign up for a free trial with my MS affiliate link.

On the other hand there are days when I want to KISS – “Keep it Short and Simple” and I’ll turn to these three resources instead. Watch this video where I demonstrate how you can get a quick snapshot of your incoming links for free!

Find Backlinks to Your Blog in the Dashboard, Technorati and Google Webmaster Tools

Three free ways to check incoming links

In the video you’ll see 3 free resources that you can use on a daily basis to check on your incoming links. Sign up for my email tips and you’ll be the first to get notified when I upload videos like this to YouTube and get more tips that will help you build your audience. (Btw if YouTube is blocked in your area, click the link to watch the video on Vimeo, let me know if that works for you.)

1. Your WordPress Dashboard (go to “screen options” and check “incoming links” if you don’t see it)
2. Your Technorati Listing (here’s what my blog’s Technorati listing looks like)
3. Your Google Webmaster Tools account (if you don’t have this sign up now!)

Do you feel like you’ve exhausted the posts you could write for your blog? Are you well and truly out of ideas? There’s one very simple way to address this.

Become a Practical Blogger

When you spend too much time on the theoretical side of a topic, or you get too caught up in what other people are saying and doing, you’ll probably start to get really bored.

Being a practical blogger isn’t just about practising what you preach. Quite simply, it’s about practising, full stop. For instance, if you write about movies, you’ll want to keep watching movies. If you write about music, you should listen to lots of music. And if you want to share tips for budding photographers, best if you do so with some examples of your own work.

Doing the thing you write about, whether you’re consuming other people’s content or creating your own, is perhaps the best way to keep coming up with new topics for your blog.

So What About Blogging Experts?

If you write blogging tips (as I do), you could argue that simply posting on your blog is good experience for you. I won’t argue with that, but I will give you a tip: Start a second blog that is not about blogging.

You will get much better experience of blogging by writing a blog about anything except blogging itself. Otherwise, your blogging blog will become blogging about blogging about blogging!

I also learn a lot by trying out new tools, visiting other blogs, posting on forums, writing guest posts, and using social networks.

If you are a practical blogger, hopefully you’ll minimise the number of occasions when you say to yourself: “I need to write a post, but I don’t have one”.

Discussion

Are you a practical blogger? How do you come up with new topics for your blog?

Image credit: “dreams and wishes” by nicole.pierce.photography

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Ever is a mix of textures and color tones that easily lends itself to professional or business blogs or websites.

JGD BizElite is ideal for a small business websites or blogs and is packed with options.

_s is a complete starter theme designed to be used as a template for your next great theme, or as described a “1,000 hour head start.”

I am sitting here at my home with nowhere to be and no appointments to keep, all because I had the guts to take the plunge and buy Web hosting, more than a few years ago now. This was the most defining moment of my career and I bet it would be the same for many other successful bloggers.

I remember the decisions that went through my head that day..

• Should I buy this hosting or not?
• What if it doesn’t work?
• What if I buy it and it is too hard to work out?
• What if building a blog or website is not for me?

My final decision was “oh who cares, it is only the price of two takeaway meals for the family”… What? Why was I even thinking about it?  I have no idea but I am sure most people think the same things!

All I say is “Thank God I bought that hosting that day”…. Imagine if I didn’t take the plunge?

Many of us here took the same plunge and others are still on the fence. I am here to push you off!

What is the real investment when you get web hosting?

Well let me tell you now, we are not talking about risking your life savings here as the monetary investment to get web hosting is very small. Therefore the real investment here is TIME.

Unfortunately most people say they are very busy in their day to day lives; however I bet I could find some spare time for you to build a blogging business.

Here are some time wasters that could be swapped for building a blog:

• Watching TV. Even the news is mostly rubbish nowadays. Better to listen to on the radio while doing something else.
• Sitting around doing nothing at all.
• Reading fiction. Why not read about blogging and increase your knowledge?
• Shopping when you don’t really need anything at all. ( I do that! )
• Spending hours surfing the Internet??
• Playing solitaire on the computer. I had to mention this one because I know a lot of people that do it.
• Playing gaming consoles. This is my pet hate because they are so addictive and suck you win. I agree that they are fantastic and a lot of fun but do not get hooked on them.

These are just a few examples, however all you have to do is think about your time that you have and manage it correctly. Everyone has the same amount of time so do not think you are special or even busier than everyone else. It’s how you manage it that counts.

What if I am not technical?

I cannot use myself as an example in this situation, because I am a self-confessed computer geek, however I have taught the most non-technical people how to build websites and create businesses. Of course these were one-on-one classes and this definitely would have helped their progress, but I believe that if you want something bad enough, you will achieve it.

The first thing you need to do is stop saying negative things about your technical ability. Be positive and move forward with your learning process. If you have trouble with some technical aspect of building a blog and getting web hosting, just work on it a little bit harder. The rewards will be all yours in the end.

Also a bonus for you is that you can now build WordPress websites from scratch within minutes and there are literally thousands of tutorials to show you how. So what’s your excuse now?

Not just that, you can even install a premium WordPress theme and make the website or blog look ultra professional in seconds!

What have you got to lose?

I’m not really sure you have anything to lose because even though you are investing time into building a blog, I guarantee you will come out at the end with more education and knowledge up your sleeve. Lets face it, if you do not jump in the water you will not get wet!

If you are worried about not watching your favorite TV show or missing out on going out with your friends for a coffee and a chat, you can’t be too serious about building a blog.

The time that I invested to build a blog was the most valuable time of my life and extremely hard work, but now because of the small investment in web hosting, I have been paid back more freedom than I could ever imagine.

Has getting web hosting changed your life too, how so?

"Five Till Midnight or Almost Time For Lunch" by bitzcelt

On “Don’t Force Your Blog Posts”, Roezer wrote a great comment:

Content loses freshness quickly and writing timeless content can be hard to write. Knowing the content you are going to write might not last forever is another turn off for blog posts.

I started to reply, before realising my thoughts would form a good post.

Timeless Content: The Downside

I think there is a drawback with timeless content. Although it might be relevant at any time, you still need to have good timing even with a timeless post.

For instance, if an entertainment blog ignored the Grammys and instead wrote a post about how a new artist can get noticed, that would still be useful. But they’ve missed a pretty important event in their field.

Should You Avoid Writing Obvious Posts?

On the other hand, bloggers may not want to write the obvious posts that everyone else is writing. A really good entertainment blog would do more than simply posting a video of Adele singing. They might write about how awesome it is to see her performing live again, and how she scooped six awards.

But how much of that would also be written by all the big entertainment news blogs? How original can you be when covering one of the most popular singers in the world?

My Opinion

I think the best approach is to write timeless content whenever suits you, but only publish it when you don’t have a big event or announcement to cover.

Discussion

Is there ever a good time to publish a timeless post?

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Blog Challenges.

What a great way to get exposure, traffic, subscribers, money and maybe backlinks all at the same time.

Well, the above statement depends upon the challenge.

There is only one other way, that I can think of, that gives all these benefits – Guest blogging.

Nowadays, you can see a lot of blogging related challenges online. Participating in those challenges offers you a good deal of benefits. In this blog post, we will take a good look at the benefits of hosting and participating in a blog challenges.

Do You Host Blog Challenges?

What is a blog challenge?

Well, if you ask me, it ranges anything from a small giveaway to big bash writing contests.

Blog challenges also refer to personal challenges that you take (we will talk about this later in the participation section).

So, do you host blog challenges?

Why or why not?

It does offer a lot of benefits to you.

For instance, if you decided to harness the power of guest blogging and combine to a blog challenge, to form a guest blogging contest, here are the usual benefits:

• Traffic – Guest bloggers blog and they market their blog post (And if they market the blog post, you get exposure along with it).  And that, my dear friend, may mean a whole lot of new subscribers and readers for your blog.
• Fresh, new voice – You see, people always like reading things from a different perspective. So, why not give them that? Some of your readers might be bored reading your article (who knows, there are not really going to tell you).
• Vacation – Take a break from blogging or better yet, plan and write out some articles for future. Or may be, comment on some blogs.
• Backlinks – You will get backlinks,  if you have about the contest as a required thing for the contest.
• Interaction – Interact with various bloggers, work with them, make friends.
• Community – Many guest bloggers do spend a lot of time to market their article and get more comments, which in turns helps you to build (or strengthen) your blog community.

You could also have more benefits depending upon the rules of the contest. For instance, I am participating in Probloggingsuccess guest blogging contest and Jane is giving 25 points for each back link that I get for my guest post.

Jane benefits from: Multiple backlinks to her blog’s posts, guest posts, traffic, interaction and community (check out how the contest posts are doing!).

Hosting a blog challenge is not a bad idea at all. And you don’t have to have money to host a challenge. You could host personal blog challenges – write a post everyday for next 2 weeks –  that don’t really require a prize or award your eBook/product for contest winners.

The Key is to be creative. You can really get the most out of this through creative thinking. I think, Jane is the first one to incorporate the idea of back link points to guest blogging contest.

Do You Participate in Blog Challenges?

As I mentioned earlier, blog challenges can be of two types

• Ones hosted by you.
• Ones hosted by others.

The ones that are hosted by you (for yourself) are used to increase your productivity. For instance: I recently had a personal blog challenge in which I challenged myself to write at least 2 articles per weekday. With the exception of few days when I wrote one instead of two, I was successful with the challenge.

And can you guess what I accomplished:

Lot of guest posts = Exposure, Traffic, Backlinks and Networking.

The most important of all, Community, I was able to build a community at my blog.

When you are hosting personal blog challenges, be sure that you can find time for it, commit to it and it is something useful to your blog.

How To: Setup Personal Blog Challenges

• Identify something that you really need to work on – Commenting? Writing more articles? Networking?
• Form a really targeted challenge – for instance: Comment 3 times in at least 10 different blogs every week day.
• Commit to yourself to the challenge – If you want things to get a little more easier, write a blog post about your challenge, this will put more pressure on you – pressure to perform the challenge.
• Make a small schedule – Allot time to your personal challenge. Promise yourself to not do anything else by following the challenge.
• Accept the challenge and Take Action
• Write about it – After you achieve/fail the challenge, write about it. What were your positives? What were your negatives? If you didn’t pass the challenge, write about what you could have done better? Share your experience because experience is the best tip.

Personal challenges are really a lot like Personal goals. They add up and help you to achieve your long term goals.

Blog challenges hosted by others – Well, the main incentive here is the prize itself. Participating in blog challenges may get you exposure, traffic, subscribers, and money (all of this depends upon the challenge).

You will probably know the  benefits of participating in blog challenges hosted by others, so I am not going to write about those.

 Blog Challenges – The Key

The Key here is to be creative and do things creatively. Participate in blog challenges. Enjoy. Don’t Worry, Be Happy. Even if you fail, because mistakes teach us  - failures are more valuable than success. By the way, if you liked the article, do let me know of your comments!

Note: Also would you mind to check my entries for two different blogging contests? Thank you