How to Find Guest Writers for Your Blog Even if It’s Brand New

As your blog’s audience grows, you’ll often need to start publishing more content if you want to keep your visitors engaged. The problem is that there’s only so much a single person can do. To remedy that problem, you could add new authors to your staff, which can be a complex process, or you could simply find guest writers who can help you keep your content schedule full.

Guest submissions are an excellent way to bring a little diversity to your blog, as well as keep it stocked with consistent content. New authors can shake things up with ideas you wouldn’t have considered, or which are outside your expertise. You just need to figure out how to attract top talent and encourage them to contribute.

Why you should consider encouraging guest posts

A guest post is when an author who’s not part of your usual team gets to publish their content on your blog. Ideally, you’ll approve the post before it’s published, and ensure it’s high quality and something that appeals to your audience. In this way, guest posts are actually collaborations between you and external writers.

Encouraging writers 🧑 who aren’t affiliated with your blog to provide posts is a win-win situation for everyone involved because:

• You get more content to work with. Guest posts mean you need to do less work to fill out your editorial calendar.
• It enables you to tackle a more diverse range of topics. Different writers may come up with post ideas that enable you to target audiences (and keywords) you haven’t focused on before.
• It provides writers with an opportunity to build their portfolio. In most cases, writers submit guest posts in exchange for money, or to get more eyes on their work.
• You can find new long-term collaborators. If you have a pool of recurring guest writers, that’s the first place you should look for new permanent additions to your team.

There are so many benefits to guest posts that it’s no wonder so many top blogs accept them. If your blog is still growing, however, figuring out how to find guest writers can be a challenge. Let’s talk more about how to get it done.

How to find guest writers for your fledgling WordPress blog (and what to look for) 🕵️

Before we talk about specific methods for finding guest posters, let’s discuss what qualities you should look for when choosing them. As far as we’re concerned, these four qualities are indispensable:

1. Experience in your blog’s niche.
2. A willingness (and ability) to adapt to your blog’s style.
3. Proficiency in coming up with quality topic ideas on their own.
4. Punctuality when it comes to delivering posts.

Of course, you’ll also want to consider what kind of compensation the guest poster expects. They may wish to be paid or simply be satisfied with a byline and/or author bio. Either way, it’s important that both parties feel they are benefiting from the collaboration.

👉 As for how to actually find new guest writers, there are two general approaches you can take:

• Inbound
• Outbound

You can also combine both – it’s not an either/or situation.

The inbound method involves setting up a Write for us page, which should include all your submission guidelines, explain how long it takes to approve ideas, and so on. You can check out our own Write for us page at the beginning of this section. You may notice that it includes a couple of extra features, such as example posts writers can use for inspiration and a dedicated submission form.

On the other hand, if your blog isn’t getting enough traffic to receive regular guest post queries, you’ll have to be more proactive (this is the outbound approach). Here are a few ways to find guest writers if they aren’t coming to you via the inbound method:

• Check out popular freelance job sites and offer payment in exchange for one-off submissions. If your blog is about WordPress, you can check out our recommendations for the best freelance platforms to find experts in the field.
• Read author bylines/author boxes at blogs you like. A byline is the bit of text that usually appears at the end of a post and often includes information about how to contact an author (we’ll show you an example of this in a second).

Two tips for attracting guest writers to your blog 🌟 💰

Once your blog is attracting thousands of visitors per month, chances are you won’t need much help to find guest writers. In the meantime, though, here are two ways to help you convince writers to guest post on your blog.

1. Allow writers to promote themselves
2. Pay for accepted submissions

1. Allow writers to promote themselves

For people who make a living writing, it’s essential to get their name out there and prove that they’re good at their craft. A byline on your blog is a solid first step, but you can go even further to help guest writers promote themselves.

Adding an author box to your posts is a perfect way to do this. It enables writers to include short biographies, links to their social media profiles, and even feature their portfolios. We’ve previously written an article about multi-author blogs that explains how to add this feature (check out step number three).

2. Pay for accepted submissions

In most cases, professionals in any field won’t work in exchange for exposure unless you’re running a very popular blog. That means you might need to entice them the old-fashioned way – by paying them.

A lot of larger blogs don’t pay for guest post submissions, but that’s only because they can afford not to. When you’re still up and coming, it makes sense to use some of your budget to get more content. In most cases, you’ll want to offer a flat fee for submissions, and make it clear that you’ll only pay for pieces you’ve agreed to publish.

You’ll probably also want to approve higher payments for repeat guest writers. After all, they’re already familiar with your style, and their pieces may not need as much editing. Plus, it may entice them to become long-term collaborators.

Conclusion 🏁

Either way, here are two tips to entice talented writers to share their work on your blog:

1. 👉 Allow authors to promote themselves using short biographies and their social media accounts or portfolios.
2. 👉 Offer payment for submissions you accept, and be as clear as possible about your terms upfront.

Do you have any questions about how to find guest writers for your blog? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!