How do I secure guest posts?

[harrygardiner]

How exactly can you go about getting a guest post on someone else's blog if you don't know them and don't have a budget to offer them anything substantial?

[jasarrow]

Hi Harry,

There are various ways in which you can try to secure guest posts on sites within your niche. To start off, there a few tools out there that will help you find opportunities (sites that are looking for articles). My Blog Guest (http://myblogguest.com/) is probably the best at the moment but Guestr (http://guestr.com) and blogger linkup (http://www.bloggerlinkup.com/) are also great. You can also use this twitter tool to help source opportunities.

Alternatives to the above include searching Google for sites that accept guest posts (look for 'write for us' and similar pages) and simply connecting with a site that you really want to write for (sending an email, asking on Twitter etc) If you're going to do this, make sure you get across the fact that you are genuinely interested in writing for them and not just wanting a link (as this will get you nowhere). It's also a good idea to include a couple of article ideas and examples of any previous posts in your intial approach to a site.

Hope this helps!