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11:44 am
July 13, 2011
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MyJourneytoMillions
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Post edited 11:01 am – July 14, 2011 by MyJourneytoMillions
Another friendly warning from your buddy Evan.
Recently received this email:
Hello,
I thought you might be interested in checking out the Personal Finance tool I recently finished building at
http:// personal-finance-softwa…..ebest.com/
I think it will be a useful resource for your readers because it allows
them to find & compare pricing, operating systems, and features of
personal finance software. It's really fun to play around with.
Would you be interested in including the resource on your site or having me write a guest post?
Regards,
Woody Robison
This site will be an affiliate machine one day, which is a cool business model but just beware that he is just trying to
1) get a link back to his site (through a "guest" post)
OR
2) Trying to embed his info on your site…which is simply an attempt to grab links using YOUR traffic all while giving himself a link back since the links are cloaked (i.e. hisdomain/sharebuilder = sharebuilder affiliate link but a linkback to his site).
Again everyone is free to do what they wish I just hate to see new bloggers not understand what they are getting themselves into.
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2:28 pm
July 13, 2011
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MoneyIsTheRoot
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Thanks for the heads up! I get a ton of these requests now… I always love how they call it a "guest post" when it's anything but. I always offer them the option of a paid post, but I typically dont hear back lol.
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3:05 pm
July 13, 2011
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Jason@LiveRealNow
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I just turned a "guest" post into money yesterday.
Random guest post requests get the same response:
xxx,
I do accept guest posts. For posts promoting commercial sites, my fee is $135, which includes 2 optimized, dofollow links that will remain live for one year. For $185, the links will be permanent.
I have a PR of 3 and a mozRank of 5.31.
Thanks,
Jason
It's about a 10% conversion. The actual dollar amount vary by how irritating the request is.
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3:44 pm
July 13, 2011
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retireby40
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Jason, Do you mind if I steal that? It's very nicely worded. 
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3:49 pm
July 13, 2011
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Squirrelers
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Jason@LiveRealNow said:
The actual dollar amount vary by how irritating the request is.
That's great! Maybe for fun I'll quote some totally outrageous figure to the next pushy individual and see what happens.
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8:51 pm
July 13, 2011
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MyJourneytoMillions
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I do the same thing Jason…I really wrote this post to warn those new bloggers who didn't understand what this particular guy was doing.
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5:04 am
July 14, 2011
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Jason@LiveRealNow
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retireby40 said:
Jason, Do you mind if I steal that? It's very nicely worded.
Be my guest.
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6:08 am
July 14, 2011
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Jason@LiveRealNow
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So far, this week, I've converted two out of four "guest post" requests to money. 50% conversion so far. :)
Of the other two, one hasn't responded, and the other came back with:
We do pay for guest posts but we have some criteria when we pay for such guest posts to other websites which needs to be fulfilled. These are :-
- PR should be more than 6.
- It should have more than 2,00,000 visitors
- Domain name should be fully relevant to debt.
As your site doesn't fulfil these requirements, I am sorry to say that I would not be able to pay you for the guest post. Instead what I can do for you is that I can provide a back link to your site in one of my sites.
So if you are interested, let me know.
Thanks and Regards,
Shawn Ambrose
My response was simple: "I'm sorry we won't be able to do business. Let me know if you adjust your expectations."
PR6 only? Totally unrealistic. But at least he offered me a link, right?
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6:47 am
July 14, 2011
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MoneyIsTheRoot
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haha I always get the back link as a response…it's probably to some spam site they run that steals other peoples content.
PR6 only.. that is a new one… there's only a handful of PF blogs that would meet their expectations.
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6:51 am
July 14, 2011
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Jason@LiveRealNow
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He gave me a list of sites. PR 0-2, all niche sites with Alexa ratings from 1.5 to 5 million.
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7:30 am
July 14, 2011
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NoDebtMBA
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Love this! And so timely! I just got my first guest post request! Responded with a version of your email.
It must mean my site is getting big if it's worth it to spammers to email me, right? ;) Just as long as they leave my comments alone. I don't want to have to go to moderated.
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7:37 am
July 14, 2011
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Suba @ Wealth Informatics
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Post edited 11:33 am – July 14, 2011 by Suba @ Wealth Informatics
Evan,
I totally agree with you in general about these "guest" posts and you are the best badges. But in this specific case, I really didn't see a single affiliate link to be honest. I got the email and did check out the site out of curiosity. I won't allow him to guest post before researching further, but I don't understand his business model as it stands now. May be the genius idea is to get all the backlinks without ads/affiliate links (otherwise people won't link to him) and THEN add the affiliate links? Don't know, but there are no affiliate links as of now.
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8:36 am
July 14, 2011
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MyJourneytoMillions
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Post edited 11:02 am – July 14, 2011 by MyJourneytoMillions
Every single one of those "reviews" was an affiliate link!
- My Mistake – I believe they will be an affiliate link one day
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8:57 am
July 14, 2011
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Suba @ Wealth Informatics
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Post edited 11:31 am – July 14, 2011 by Suba @ Wealth Informatics
I checked mint and quickbooks review. Actually the link (if I hover over) is http://www.mint.com ? It might be a clever cloak and may be the business model is to eventually stuff it with affiliate links… but they are not affiliate links at this time and I am just curious about how he is/will make money right now…
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10:55 am
July 14, 2011
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MyJourneytoMillions
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Post edited 10:59 am – July 14, 2011 by MyJourneytoMillions
I am not trying to say the site or model is bad, rather I think it is a really cool business model. That being said, to the best of my knowledge it is not a non-profit consumer advocate and that is all I was trying to portray.
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11:27 am
July 14, 2011
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Brandon@FindTheBest.com
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Hello, My name is Brandon and I am a co-worker of Woody's at FindTheBest. We take our image as consumer advocates very seriously. I am shocked that "My Journey to the Millions" would post this without doing the research, I hope he doesn't write his blog stories in the same fashion.
The reality is that none of those links are affiliates, and we drive traffic straight to the manufacturer or services web site. FindTheBest is the alternative to a cheap affiliate site. Wh have a team of dedicated research analysts that have created over 550 comparisons. Our integrity and reputation as the leading site to find and compare online is worth far more to us then affiliate revenue. We have not advertised because we are focused on making a great product and getting our name out there.
We ask to guest post because we believe we have a unique and and valuable service, and we like to present the main features and describe how to use the page.
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11:42 am
July 14, 2011
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Suba @ Wealth Informatics
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Brandon, Evan reacted because we get tons of these "guest" post request everyday from affiliate-stuffed companies and debt consolidation blogs. And a lot of new bloggers (myself included) won't know the difference between a genuinely good resource and a for-sale service pretending to be a resource. We do our own research on what to allow as guest post and he was just trying to caution people.
With that said, are you saying you will NEVER convert them into affiliate links? And never convert this into a business? Again, I am not saying converting it into a money making business is wrong. You put the effort, so you want to monetize. But if it is every going to be a business, shouldn't it be treated as a business "now" and publicized that way?
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2:29 pm
July 14, 2011
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Peerform-Blog
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Suba @ Wealth Informatics said:
Brandon, Evan reacted because we get tons of these "guest" post request everyday from affiliate-stuffed companies and debt consolidation blogs. And a lot of new bloggers (myself included) won't know the difference between a genuinely good resource and a for-sale service pretending to be a resource. We do our own research on what to allow as guest post and he was just trying to caution people.
With that said, are you saying you will NEVER convert them into affiliate links? And never convert this into a business? Again, I am not saying converting it into a money making business is wrong. You put the effort, so you want to monetize. But if it is every going to be a business, shouldn't it be treated as a business "now" and publicized that way?
Hmm. I never realized there was such a negative stigma for "company blogs". Although companies are writing guest posts to drive traffic back to their site, isn't that one of the end-goals of guest posting for everyone ?
I can understand why you guys are concerned though. I can't speak for all company blogs, but what I've noticed is for the few that I've been on are:
1. They rarely get ANY traffic or comments
2. often contain generic information
How can I convince you guys otherwise?
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Blogwriters and Marketing Team for Peerform's Blog
Topics include:Personal Finance, Debt, Debt Management, Peer to peer lending
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2:54 pm
July 14, 2011
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Suba @ Wealth Informatics
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P2PNoob, Are you asking me? If you are, I don't understand what you are asking  Can you explain it to me? I am really sorry, I am just a little sleep deprived today…
If you are asking why company blogs shouldn't guest post…The answer is simple, business should have a business advertising budget. They can always guest post, but the correct name would be advertorials. You can argue a blog with ads are a business too… Sure… but as bloggers, we are sharing information not selling something. And we can be confident that the readers we send to that blog won't be pitched for something to buy. We do each other a favor by letting other bloggers guest post. Every single one of us will evaluate a blogger before accepting a guest post. And I can personally say that if the exists for the sole purpose of selling ads, most of us consider them as business blogs.
More than anything, it is what/who we are linking to. As a fellow blogger, I trust that person and can send my readers to his/her blog. If I am to link to a business, I have to be in love with the business; in which case I will do it for free as I genuinely find them useful or they will be advertisements and marked as such.
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8:19 pm
July 14, 2011
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Matt Wegner
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This is a good thread. I've learned a lot from reading this. As I don't get a lot of requests for guest posts yet, my initial system has been this: If it looks like a canned letter that gets sent to everyone (and they didn't even bother to make sure the font was consistent where they cut and pasted my name and other info), then I'm not all that interested.
If it's someone who obviously took the time to read some articles and find out what we're all about, I'm interested. I like some of the responses shared here, though.
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