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If you really want good content, pay cash money.

That's just looking in only one of many possible directions... One of guest posts placed on my site brought me a mention in NYTimes, another one brought me 10000 visits from SU (and still counting since then). Another one ranks top in Google = constant stream of free traffic.

I am advocate of guest blogging (the quality one) because it's what makes content social. It's like comments: I don't like blog posts that disable them because they take the social aspect of content marketing away.

Yes, paying for content is one of the ways to get it, but even paying for it you will get lotы of low-quality articles (especially you build up the base of reliable writers which takes time). It's also an investment many bloggers simply can't afford, so there's nothing groundbreaking in your advice, sorry, I do respect it...

I'd say we can only guess... There are so many variables here. Guest posts may go down the archive and thus the link value may be decreasing. Or possibly there are some flags - which would be not a smart idea though because I see dozens of blog who nofollow links with no intention (because of installing a new WP plugin. So honestly, I don't have the answer.