Five months ago I broke my foot and my whole life changed. Hopping around on crutches, I could no longer work as a waitress which is how I supported myself and my blogging habit/business. I had no idea how I would continue to support myself while I was disabled, in a city nearly 3,000 miles away from any of my friends or family.
In a stroke of luck, intuition or maybe divine intervention, I was up one night feeling sorry for myself when a random conversation I had two weeks before came tumbling back into my mind. A woman I met randomly mentioned that she paid her rent through blogging. I shook my head and figured that she must have some super powers because I had been a blogger for nearly 10 years and I had never paid a bill from my blogging efforts.
Five months later, I am now fully supporting myself as a guest blogger. Yes, I get PAID to share my writing on other blogs and websites which drives consistent traffic to my blog and is helping to grow my subscriber list. Jon Morrow was right, guest blogging is an excellent way to expose your blog to potential readers but there’s an added bonus, you can also support yourself financially while marketing your blog through guest blogging.
Here’s how I did it.
My blog is an empowerment blog for women. We publish interviews with female entrepreneurs, stories about women who make unique life choices and we offer inspirational articles that teach how to handle life’s mishaps. I looked around and there were no other bloggers doing exactly what we do, so I realized that I had to focus on other parts of my life to be able to connect with other bloggers.
What are other labels that describe me?
Mom. Non conformist. Skeptic. Abuse survivor. Writer. Author. Traveler. Adventurer. Lover. Fighter. Daughter. Friend. College graduate. Humanist. Women’s activist. Social critic. Opinionated.
After assessing my personality, I beamed with pride because my opinions are more diverse and valuable than I once thought and guess what- so are yours.
There are websites dedicated to any and all of the labels and topics I mentioned above. Many of them will pay you to share your stories or advice with their audience which will allow you to magnetically attract their readers back to your slice of the internet pie.
I’m a Mom, so I found a Parenting blog to reach out to. I sent them an email and asked if they were accepting submissions from freelance writers and they welcomed me easily because I already had a blog and writing clips to share. Parenting is not exactly that same as my particular niche of inspiration but the women from that site who find my parenting stories intriguing click through to visit my blog and often subscribe.
I was amazed by how easy it was to:
1) Introduce myself in an email with links to my blog and writing clips
2) Ask if they are accepting submissions
3) Offer 3 ideas for articles I believed would fit in with their content
4) Wait for their approval and then write my blog post according to their standards
5) Get paid
I then noticed that there were plenty of websites geared toward women that I could share a variety of my life stories with. I have written about my love life, my sex life, my children, my intuition, my spiritual journey and my work as a women’s advocate. You have a life outside of blogging (I hope) and there are so many interesting stories you can share that will allow new readers the chance to get to know you and want to stop by your corner of the internet.
Here is a list of 7 websites and blogs that will PAY between $25- $500 for your stories.
Thirsty for more? Of course you are! If you want to find more sites to pitch to pay attention to the structure of each site you visit that caters to your particular interest. Those sites with related article snippets at the end of them often link to websites/blogs that are similar to them in revenue. If one site can pay you, the ones they link to may be able to as well.
Doesn’t this take away from working on your own blog? It sure does, but it’s worth it when you see your traffic spike. If you don’t speak up on other people’s platforms, no one will know yours exists. Guest blogging is the perfect way to market your blog and make money at the same time.
You can do it!
HEY BEAUTIFUL, THANK YOU FOR SHARING, I’M GOING TO CHECK THEM OUT!