Writing Guest Posts vs. Writing for Your Own Blog

This is a guest post from Steven Snell, a website designer and blogger for Vandelay Website Design. His blog is regularly updated with new content on web design, marketing, SEO, and blogging. His blog includes A Guide to Promoting Your Blog Through Guest Posts.

Writing guest posts is a great way to reach new audiences in a short amount of time. However, there are many bloggers who choose to use all of their content for their own blog. Which approach is right? You’ve only got a limited time to spend on writing, so what is a better use of your time – writing for your own blog, or writing guest posts? Let’s look at the pros and cons of each.

Pros for Writing Guest Posts

• One of the fastest ways to reach a (potentially) large, new audience.
• Readers will get to see your knowledge and expertise.
• You’ll get quality backlinks to your own blog.
• It helps you to build a network.
• You can help other bloggers by providing good content.

Cons for Writing Guest Posts:

• You’re helping to build someone else’s blog instead of your own.
• A post that attracts a lot of links will produce links for the other blog, not yours.
• You won’t be able to use that content on your own blog.
• Time is limited.

Pros for not Writing Guest Posts:

• You can focus more time and effort on developing quality content for your own blog.
• There is no dependence on others to choose to post your writing.
• Any links gained will come to your blog.
• There are significant long-term traffic effects from having quality content.

Cons of not Writing Guest Posts:

• You’ll miss out on valuable networking opportunities.
• You’ll miss out on the chance to get your writing in front of another blogger’s audience.

Conclusion:

Producing quality content is essential regardless of whether you are posting on your own blog or writing guest posts. By guest posting you are really trading long-term effects of increased content for the benefits that come along with reaching new readers. I think this is a good trade for new bloggers who are still trying to build a solid base of readers. After all, having quality content on your blog will do you no good if there is no one there to read it.

A solid strategy is to guest post to grow your audience and then focus on your own blog. Of course, guest posting does not mean that you don’t have to also create quality content for your own blog at the same time.

How do you feel about writing guest posts? Is it something that you do now or that you have considered? Do you feel that it is worth the time?