My First Guest Post Ever Is At PlantingDollars.com

You may remember my giddy school-girl excitement a few days ago when I mentioned that I had written my very first guest post for another blogger? It’s up now at PlantingDollars.com, and I’d love you guys to check it out and tell me what you think.

Here’s the full title: What A Dragster Mechanic Taught Me About Living Cheaply.

Chances are that 80 percent of the people reading this today are actually visiting from PlantingDollars, since Ryan has a daily readership that makes my monthly viewership droop a chocolate bunny rabbit in a hot Arizona sun. So, logically, there’s an 80 percent chance that YOU have never been here before, but followed the link in my guest post at PlantingDollars!

That’s So Cool! Glad to have you! I hope you like my cozy little blog – feel free to look around the place, make yourself at home, grab a cold  beverage from the virtual refrigerator… mi casa es su casa.

What’s The Big Deal About Writing Guest Posts?

I hope to have a great, real, first-person answer to that after my guest post has aged for a while and I can provide some actual hard data. In the meantime, here is a so-so good answer:

Writing guest posts seems like a great way to accomplish three things:

1. Increase Traffic. If you guest blog on a site that gets considerable traffic, you’ve got a great chance that some of those readers will wonder over to your blog. Most of them will probably only stick around once, but a small percentage may become life long readers.

2. Search Engine Optimization. Most blogs allow their guest writers to include a couple of backlinks to their own sites, with anchor text of their choosing (so long as the wording fits the story). Backlinks from sites that Google (and the other search engines) see as authority sites will help your search engine domination efforts big time.

3. Make Friends. If nothing else, writing for other people’s blogs is a great way to get to know the other person. Chances are you’ve at least emailed back and forth once or twice in the process of setting up the post. In this instance, I’ve emailed Ryan a couple of times and can honestly say that he’s just as cool in person as he is at PlantingDollars.

4. Show Your Skills. I know, I know… I said “3 important things” not “4.” But I couldn’t resist this one. As a professional writer, it’s easy to get into a slump. Especially on a blog. It eventually seems like you’re writing for the sake of writing, rather than creating the next literary masterpiece. Guest posting provides some fresh inspiration and a sink-or-swim challenge: If your story isn’t good, not only will you look like a dork in front of a giant audience, the blogger may reject it entirely.

A Plug For Planting Dollars

Ryan, the blog mastermind behind Planting Dollars, has a really great angle on the often drab subject of personal finance. The guy is fresh out of college and gave up a “dream job” (read: horrible atmosphere with a great paycheck) to live at Hawaii on a budget of next to nothing. He makes ends meet by living cheaply, and in the process seems to enjoy the living heck out of his life.

If you’re not already familiar with Planting Dollars, I’d recommend checking it out. Not only is it chalk full of great financial tips, it’s also flowing with great website building topics and even the occasional picture of a shark.

In fact, seeing the early success of Planting Dollars was my big inspiration for starting Search Engine Viking.

So Check Out My Guest Post Already!

… if you haven’t already read it. I had a great time writing it, and I’d like to know what you guys think.

Tags: Guest Post, Planting Dollars

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 at 4:32 pm by Lee and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.