Some Guest Bloggers are Morons and they Annoy Me

I have written about this before.

In fact it is basically a pet peeve for me when someone contacts me asking to do a guest post on one of my 200+ websites, but they want to do it for free and they don't want to pay anything for posting advertising on my website.

They also don't want to pay anything for my time and effort in posting it for them, which includes formatting it, adding images, editing content for quality (spelling, grammar, making sure it is family friendly, etc).

So like this morning I got an email from a "Stella Evans" - probably not even her real name, insisting that I should give her a free guest post because:

I am already investing lots of money in Content Research and Promoting in Social Media Platform.

It's going to bring traffic to your website too.

Let me know if you are still interested.

Thanks,

-Stella

To which I responded:

Hey Stella!

My website is already SUPER popular. Anything you can offer me social media wise is a drop in the bucket compared to what I already have.

Google tracks incoming and outgoing links - and reciprocal links (which is frowned upon). Incoming links boosts the Google ranking a tiny bit, outgoing links lowers it. However reciprocal links damages it more so.

Unless you are paying for the link, it is not worth my time or the damage to my Google ranking. The number of links you can promise is not worth the damage of the outgoing link unless you are willing to pay for it.

Worse, social media links are rel=nofollow. That means they are useless for boosting Google rankings. Twitter, Facebook, etc all useless. Might get a tiny trickle of people the day of any postings, but it immediately dwindles because so few people click on those things. It would be meaningless compared to the 1000 to 2000 visitors my website gets every day.

And then I ranted for a bit...

Before saying the following:

If you are going to do link building - especially when trying to link build on popular websites - the smart money says you need to pay for it.

Do you honestly think you are the first person to contact me asking for a free link? I get these requests every day. Multiple requests per day. Right now I have 5 other people in my email queue asking for links, but the big difference is that 3 of them are offering money.

Why should I spend time talking to you when other people are paying me for my time?

And now I am posting it here.

Because this is what happens when I get annoyed about something SEO related. I rant, I post it on here, and all my effort ranting has at least been useful and educational.

Worse, less than three hours later there was another two people asking for a guest post on my website. Not sure yet if they are willing to pay. One of the first questions I always ask these people is:

"How much are you offering per guest post?"

Because if they are not paying then they are just wasting my time.

Like this girl who emailed me at 12:53 PM today:

I’m Lori, a new reader of your site, awesome articles and blog section by the way.
On my blog [company name removed].org I write about showers and bathroom related topics.

I’m writing to you because I’d love to contribute a guest post on [name of website removed]

I've been brainstorming some ideas and guest post titled something like these would be a good fit for your site:

- Why is it recommended to use massage shower after workout?
- Reasons Why You Need to Take Cold Showers More Often
- Immune System Benefits of an Infrared Sauna
 
Do you agree? How about I write one of these for you?

Here are some of our previous guest posts:

[list of three website links removed]

Best regards,
Lori L

 Or this girl who emailed me at 1:15 PM today:

Hey there,

My name is Rachel and I am the outreach manager at [name of company removed].

I wanted to see if you would be interested in adding a paid sponsored post to your blog that we would provide.

If this is something you might be interested in let me know and I'd be happy to give you more details.

Thank you,
Rachel W

So which of these two emails do you think I will pay more attention to? It is obviously Rachel. Right in the first email she said the magic words:

"paid sponsored post"

Right away, Rachel has the respect. And today I am feeling generous. I am going to let her know that $30 is the minimum fee. She might have been willing to go higher, but frankly I like her style. Rachel is awesome.

And working with her will make me a happy blogger and SEO expert.


Update at 1:39 PM

Stella Evans just sent me the following:

$5 I can provide a publishing fee.

Which is only one sixth of what my MINIMUM fee is.

Remember how I always ask "How much are you offering per guest post?" ...?

Well I ask that because sometimes people offer $40 to $100 per post. Really depends on what they are advertising I find. So I find it is handy to wave some bait there and see how much they offer.

$5?

$5 is less than half the minimum hourly wage in Ontario. Less than half! Meanwhile my hourly wage for SEO work is $40 per hour. I am not cheap, but I am well worth it.

Basically I am literally swimming in offers from guest bloggers and the fact that some of them like Stella Evans just don't seem to "get it" annoys me. Why should I waste any time on cheapskate morons not willing to pay money for a service when other people are contacting me every day asking for the same thing, but are willing to pay for it???