RSS Feeds: Guest Blogging
As of today, I have had three people ask me to be a guest author (one in a roundabout way). There's only problem I have with it. I think I would end up posting less on my own blog. I don't think people want to read my "Blog Drive-Bys" as my only posts, because I think that's what would happen at this point in time.
Don't get me wrong. I think it's a great idea to have a guest author on your blog. The guest author gets a backlink to his or her own blog and the host gets a good article to post. It's a winning arrangement for all parties involved.
Why would people ask for a guest author in the first place? Despite being as active as they can be with their blogs, their blogs are not their primary jobs. Real world requirements force many authors to neglect their blogs, sometimes for too long. Having a guest author in place can keep a blog active and continue to satisfy their regular readers.
In the past, there were occasions where I just had so much to write about that I ended up postponing the articles for days. Some of those articles became obsolete by the time I got back to them. A lot of things I've written about are tied in to current events. Sure, they're obsolete in few days (and not future-proofed at all), but they reflect my thoughts and that's what this blog is all about. The next time I find myself in that situation, I know who to contact to get the articles out before they become obsolete.
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I still don't have even a fraction of my feed reading fans added to the bottom of my RSS feed. Pass me a note of some kind that you subscribe to my feed and I'll add your blog to the growing list. Once I have more than 10 on my list, I'll be rotating the blogs on it every week for maximum exposure.
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The offer was meant to allow you to write something for my audience. Yes, I do post plenty every day!
Hi RT – I consider you way above average in terms of managing a website. My blogger is broken beyond repair I'm afraid. You are using WordPress and I just opened an account. If I want to mess with the template so I can continue doing what I am currently doing what do I need to do. Upgrade? By how much and so forth. I have already imported my blog to WordPress. Any assistance would be awesome.
I just looked at your new WordPress blog. It looks pretty good. I don't have a blog on WordPress… I'm hosted on a regular domain. (Total cost less than $50 for the year.) I don't know how much editing WordPress.com allows of their templates on your site. The better person to ask on this would be Goldcoaster. He edited and added some stuff to his — goldcoaster.wordpress.com
If you want to get your hands dirty in the middle of theme code and such, I can recommend that you get your own domain and website so you have complete control.
WordPress.com is worse than blogger when it comes to customizability.
You are stuck with a set of pre-built templates. TO customize, I think you need a paid upgrade or something.
At least, that's what I saw when I last visited my useless WP.com account. When I started blogging it didn't exist. Later out of curiosity I joined, but wasn't really impressed. Self-hosted WordPress is miles ahead.
First official UV subscriber here…;-)
Guest blogging is a favor that bloggers can do for one another in hard times (too busy with life to blog), it never has to be something that takes a blogger away from his own blog.
However, if this guest blogger was to write for everyone, every time they asked…then he/she could be in quite a predicament!
That being said…I would welcome RT on eJabs, as well as several others who have commented here.
Thanks RT. See, I just saw that your site was powered by WordPress, but didn't read the rest of the stuff…
How do I get a .com address? Is it difficult to work with? I'm not talented like you are. Thanks for helping me here. :)
Okay, I'll scrap the WordPress idea. It didn't take long to set up so that's why I went there. I appreciate your comments. :)
Its entirely doable to go with Wordpress and self-host. I get frustrated now with the limitations of Blogger and Wordpress.com. I know they're free, so what do you expect, but there are other options. I ran my blog on a free host up until late March with Wordpress. If you're interested, the host that I used (I had used two, but one became unreliable), and still have an account at, is http://www.frihost.com. You'll have to post in the forums regularly to keep your hosting, but that's possible, as I was there from Sept 2005 to Mar 2007 with almost no down time. Its a bit weird at first learning how to navigate a directory on a web host, but you'll get the hang of it fast. They use a control for managing everything and you get ftp access. They let me use my own domain, which I got registered elsewhere and I really don't have much bad to say about them. My needs outgrew them for my site, so I went with paid hosting after that and am reasonably pleased with my choice of host (for $2.95/mo! wow!). If you use Wordpress 2.2, you can import your blogger posts and you're off to the races. If you don't, you can use that wp.com account you opened and import there and then export your blog to a file.
I know, it sound more complicated than it is. You'll be glad that you did. And, the advantage of your own domain is that you don't have to worry about having it disappear out from under you when your free blog becomes paid, or whatever. One never knows.
Wow. Can't I shut up?
Hey,
I just wanted to say that the Feed links are a good idea, but actually no one seems to care (click) them.
How does I know?
I have this:
http://getclicky.com/4835
:-)
Just because there's no click today, doesn't mean there won't be tomorrow.
Don't forget that a click now in a reader might not happen, but one later on a Google blog search, or Feedburner search might.
I didn't think of that. Those links will be around a long time on Google.
I'm a subscriber, but I'd rather not participate in what you're doing. I don't have a problem with it per-se, but I feel that it amounts to the same type of spam as the technorati favorites thing that I also didn't participate in.
I personally like hearing what you have to say, but I could care less about seeing the same bunch of names at the bottom of each post. I understand that you want to give some sort of incentive for subscribing to your feed, but I really feel that it's just amounting to spam.
Note: I'm not trying to get you to not do it, I just wanted to respond to your comments regarding how many of your readers aren't telling you to add them, to tell you why I'm not having you add me.
That's not a problem, jer. I don't expect everyone to agree with my reasons for doing it. If you notice on my later posts, I stopped mentioning it, like I stopped mentioning other things. It's an experiment (I think I mentioned that) and it may not be something I do for more than a month or so.
This topic are closed? Or no?
No, the topic is still open.
"Guest authors" – good way to fill blog with unique content.
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