Writing A Guest Post for Someone Else’s Blog

Want more traffic for your website or blog? Write a guest post for someone else’s blog.

Guest posts broaden your audience instantly. You not only receive recognition on the other blog, but you’ll hopefully get a bit of traffic to your own. It’s free advertising and it’s more effective than paid advertising.

Think about it. If you paid for an ad, you’d get a small bit of space. With a guest blog post, you get about 500 words–a much larger virtual space + your images and credit. With a guest blog post, you’re being helpful to a community and generating good karma. Not so with an ad.

Write For This Blog

Please note: I no longer publish guest posts on this blog, but I’ve kept this here for 3 reasons:

1. It might help you pitch your story to other blogs.
2. I might write your story myself if it meets the criteria below.
3. I might want to interview you on the Art Biz Podcast.

From time to time, I feature guest bloggers who share their stories of success (or utter failure). Do you have one to share?

What has worked for you?

Since this is the Art Biz Blog, I’d like to hear your successful business tips and stories – but only one at a time please.
What–exactly–did you do to get 150 people to your art opening?
How–exactly–did you go from selling $1000 worth of art in your booth to averaging $5000 in sales?
How–exactly–did you get 1,000 people to sign up for your newsletter?
How–exactly–did you get 100 new Facebook likes in one week?
How–exactly–did you sell 25 pieces of art through Twitter in 3 months?
What is your favorite piece of software that you haven’t heard other artists using and how does it help you?

What hasn’t worked?

I’d also be interested in hearing about your failures. They say we learn more from failures.

Where did you waste some money, how did you learn from it and what will you do differently next time?

Why did no one show up at your open studio and what would you do differently next time?

Steps For Guest-Blogging Here

FIRST, pitch me your story.

You must be an authority on the subject, which means that you experienced/lived it or studied it in detail. I do not accept guest posts from professional guest bloggers who are unrelated to the art world.

Tell me what you want to write about in 2 sentence. You have to sell me on the idea.
Email me and tell me what you want to write about and why it would be good for my readers. Don’t start writing until you pitch your idea.

** Publishing etiquette: pitch your idea to only one blog at a time. **

Send me a very clear thought that is straight to the point. I don’t have time to help you formulate your post. I’m looking for a very (very!) specific story. It should be one thing you have done that has worked (or not worked) for you. There should be a clearly articulated lesson in it for my readers. We shouldn’t have to figure out the lesson for ourselves.

Your story must be original. You might have been formulating the content in other posts or articles, but the entire article must not appear anywhere else online.

Your story should not be media specific. It needs to be applicable to most artists. My readership varies from jewelers to painters to sculptors to photographers and beyond.

Your first assignment is to do the above – following directions. If I like your story and want to use it, I’ll ask for the following. Again, please follow directions.

• If you have a story, write it up! I’m looking for 400-800ish words. If you don’t think you can write, don’t fret too much. I serve as your editor and will run any major changes by you at your request. Write your story to my readers. If it contains too many personal pronouns (I, me, my, mine, myself), I can’t publish it. You’re writing for someone else, not for yourself.
• A 1-2 sentence bio that includes what you want to link to.
• A headshot no wider than 125-150 pixels.
• At least 3 outbound links for your article to other sites (not just your own).
• A link to an image of yours to use. Neither it nor the images on your side should have watermarks across the center of the image. I need complete credit line as follows: ©Date, Artist name, Title of work. Media, dimensions (HxWxD). Please send it in this format.

Note: It could take up to 8 weeks or longer to publish accepted posts.

In Return

In return for your guest post, I will:

• Credit you by name and link to your name at the top of the post.
• Credit you again with your headshot and über-brief bio at the bottom of the post, with another link.
• Link wherever you like (within reason!). Your links can go to your blog or website, but they could also go to any offer or promotion you have. Links to specific pages (funneling traffic) are more effective than entire sites.
• Feature your art on the blog post.
• Share it on social media.
• Be eternally grateful that you have helped my readers build their art businesses.

Sample Guest Blogger posts: Maren Bargreen, Lisa McShane, Michael Lynn Adams, Liz Crain

This post was originally published July 5, 2013, and has been updated with original comments intact.