Set yourself a Realistic Budget
Got a budget of $150 but you’re wanting to be featured on Forbes, Lifehacker or Buzzfeed? We can tell you now, it’s not going to happen. You can’t expect yourself to buy the Mona Lisa when you’ve only got $100 dollars to spend. Let’s be realistic here.
The reason why so many high-metric websites charge so much is because they know the value their site is to business owners such as yourself. They know exactly what you’re trying to achieve and they know their site can get you there, but it’s going to cost you.
This is why so many publishers who own high-metric sites charge between $200 to $500+ to publish on their site. You got to remember while you may be gaining value by linking to them, they’re risking their rankings being linked to your website, especially if the metrics aren’t as fabulous as you’d like them to be.
Your budget needs to be realistic in order for you to really harness the power you may be looking for, so always keep this in mind.
Get Yourself a Good Content Writer
This is probably one of the most important things that you can do. You can go through the effort of finding a great website, but if your content is Sugar-Honey-Iced-Tea, then what’s the point? Finding a content writer is easy; finding a great one-now that’s different. In order to find a content writer who will suit your needs and can write, here’s some things you can look for:
Do they provide samples of their work for viewing within the same niche?
Are they open to doing a test to see whether they’re able to produce the same quality as the samples?
Are they responsive and are their English skills reflected in their everyday messages?
Do they write surface level content-content that doesn’t go in-depth with information-or have they actually done research?
Are they able to finish the work in a suitable time frame?
Does the content pass Copyscape?
Here’s a great article to know if you’re receiving good quality content.
DIY Guest Posting Vs Professional Services
A major misconception about guest posting is that you can do it extremely cheaply. Believe us, it’s not cheap. When considering doing DIY vs professional services, here’s some inside information to consider.
To give you an idea, when running your own outreach campaigns, you can expect a 1-2% conversion rate. So outreaching to 100 publishers may only get you a successful return of 1 or 2 publishers who might want to work with you. So if you look at the numbers, getting someone to find and send emails to 1,000 publishers, which could mean hours of paid work, you may only get 100 who respond back.
Then you have to factor in content-you can’t just write any old thing and hope the publisher takes it. Not all publishers will take content even if you’re offering $300 to $400. Some publishers will only take content if it’s in their niche and if it’s written to a high standard. Generally, writers who can handle content such as this charge an arm or a leg, which also adds to the overall cost of the placement.
On top of this is generally a publishing cost. Yes, that’s right-people charge to publish your content. Depending on the site and their metrics, you’ll find they may charge a low amount like $30 but then you might find they may charge $550 to publish.
If you factor this in, plus combine it with the extra time sending, following up, and finding more sites over and over again, the costs start adding up.
A professional service like NO BS Marketplace generally has infrastructure in place to be able to cater to the mass production of guest posts. Services like this can be beneficial because not only is all the work done, it also saves countless hours of finding the right people to do the different tasks required.
In the end, it all boils down to your budget, time, and whether you have to meet deadlines. Long-term DIY guest posting may not be sustainable if you’re really trying to up the ante against your competition. This is why you need to seriously consider the costs of each individual stage before attempting it.
Unleashing the power of guest posting should be harnessed by businesses around the world. Unfortunately, not everyone gets or feels the power of successful guest posting. Don’t despair, however; it’s not too late to make a U-turn and get your link-building and guest post campaign on the right track.
Here’s to harnessing the power!