Your Blog Is Your Baby, Don’t Leave It With Strangers

Mystery Guest easily took the throne, Kim? Way to hurt Jane’s and my feelings!

I don’t find anything wrong with guest-blogging as long as:
1) You identify the guest-blogger
2) You have editorial control over the post.
My blog reflects upon me, and I wouldn’t want someone to post something that I don’t agree with. It’s like a newspaper: the editors ultimately decide what gets in.
Instead of guest-blogging, I future-post. When I have a free moment and an extra post idea, I compose it and set it to show up when I’m on vacation. It’s fun to see what shows up when I’m away. :)

I want to defend Nathania too. I can’t say I know her very well, but from what I do know I have no doubt there is only the best intention with the Guest Blogging service.

I also think it can be a valuable service. It’s very elitist to think most of us can just alert readers we’re going on vacation and looking for guest bloggers and think they’ll be falling all over themselves. Rae can, but most of us can’t.

Now I wouldn’t let anyone write for my blog. I do care a lot about it and am very protective of it, but I may not know enough people who I could directly ask to fill in for me. A service like Guest Blogger will help build relationships among bloggers so they can get to know each other.

I completely agree about paid commenting being a bad idea, though. That’s just spam waiting to happen.

there is enough automated spam and now human edited spam – this is just horrible!
this service by Jon WarASS is going to be the most hated person in the blogsphere

Well, since Nathania is not only a friend of mine, but a long-term reader of my blog, I feel the need to defend her just a tiny bit. :)

I think you might be confusing the baby with the bath water. Any respectable blogger is going to read anything before posting it on their site. Any any guest blogger writing for free is going to want to write for a respectable blogger, not some spammy site, what would be in it for the author besides a bad rep?

I mean, anyone can write for their own spammy site if they really want to go there. ;)

I see it more like a free temp agency for bloggers – where due diligence is required on both sides for it to work. But when it doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean the temp agency is the one in the wrong.

Just my $.02. :)

I should add that we have started a blog on Guest Blogger (what a concept) to help our users understand the fundamentals of guest blogging. I also revised the copy on the front page to help reflect a better vision of why we started it. (although please note the ALPHA!)
And yes, people will take advantage of our service, just like they do Digg, StumbleUpon, comments on blogs, etc. But for us, that’s not enough reason not to start the site.

For many of the blog categories listed on the Guest-Blogger site, I can see how it would be easy and fun to do. Where I don’t see it working would be blogs such as this one, and mine, and others where the blog is known for the owner’s personality and writing style.

Granted, Rae did a fine job cloning herself with her guest bloggers. Subbing for me would be so boring it would make everyone cry, compared to her place. :)

Another thought is how well Mystery Guest did whenever she popped in at SEOMoz/blog. Her writing style is so incredible that she not only fit right in, but easily took the throne.

Matt — I’d guest blog for you any day because i know you and you know me. I know your blog, I know your real name, and I know when I get to Hawaii drinks are on you! We’re blogging buddies.

Nathania — I apologize if you took offense to the post, that obviously was not my intention.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with guest blogging; it’s healthy, both for the blog and the blogger. What I’m not comfortable with is the idea of opening my blog up to someone that I don’t know or have some kind of connection with. A blog is personal and your readers form an attachment to you. To let someone come in that you can’t vouch for me, to me, that’s problematic. The blogosphere is filled with people looking to get noticed. If you’re looking for guest bloggers, ask from within your community, frequent commenters, other bloggers that you have relationships with and who know what you and your blog are about.

The other issue I have with Guest-Blogger is that I fear less than respectable “bloggers” will ultimately take advantage of it and use it to feed their MFA sites. And when that happens everyone loses.

Again, my apologies if I came off strongly in my post. I didn’t mean to totally lump you in with the spammy Buy Blog Comments site and that’s probably how it came off.

Well there goes my request for you to guest write my next 3 blog posts….

Wow, Lisa, I’ve been reading you and linking to you (at the SEM ZONE) for months. But I can’t believe your statements about the site – Guest-Blogger.com – that my husband and I started.

We didn’t design it so that people will get lazy about blogging. I mean, it’s HIGHLY UNLIKELY you’re going to get somebody to just blog for your blog all the time for free.

There’s a lot of interest in the blogging community in guest blogging. I mean, blogging is about community. So why is guest blogging so offensive? Problogger does it, Wendy Piersall does it, sheesh, the list goes on and on.

We’re just helping less famous bloggers do it too.