Where I – and Blogging From Paradise – have been featured.
You had to be in by 6:30 PM.
Or you could die a violent, painful death. All alone.
Kelli and I house sat (and outhouse shat) in the remote Costa Rica jungles a while back. At 6:30 PM, the jungle went pitch dark. Humanity was 3 hours away. Much of the route was impassable save by horseback or your own 2 feet.
A fer de lanz bite or stumble over a cliff in this mountainous region could would likely mean death.
I loved the sit. I hated the sit too. Because even though I loved being alone in the wilderness I hated being alone with Kelli in the wilderness.
If you’re reading this post you may be sick of that same alone, isolated feeling with your blog. No real traffic. No real comments. Little or no profits.
Sucks, doesn’t it? You may feel like a Nobody, from Nowhere, with nobody listening.
Landing guest posts or features on top blogs would help to turn your pain and suffering into joy, fun and elation. But it feels SO far away. But….it’s not as far away as you think it is.
I went from Broke Blogging Bum as a newbie to Struggling Blogging Bozo to Established Pro Blogger who has been featured on:
- Virgin
- Forbes
- Fox News
- Entrepreneur
- Positively Positive
- Life Hack
- John Chow Dot Com
- Smart Blogger
- Neil Patel Dot Com
- Pro Blogger
- NYU (cyber speaking engagement)
As you can imagine, landing these coveted features:
- increases your blog traffic
- increases your blogging profits
- boosts your cyber street cred
- expands all aspects of your blog, business and community
- feels amazing!
Here’s the kicker; the guy who landed these features felt like he was a Nobody from Nowhere who felt he had nothing helpful to say. My self-worth resided in a filthy sewer below New York City. But I turned things around. I gained confidence. I gained clarity.
Some of the most famous blogs on earth wanted to hear my opinion. How crazy is that?
If you feel like a “Blogging Nobody From Nowhere With Nothing To Say That Anybody Actually Wants To Hear” you too can get featured on the top blogs on earth. No joke. Don’t lose hope!
These are my tips for you to follow to land features on the world’s most famous blogs.
A1: Change Your Frame of Mind from “2 Pitches to 2 Years”
If you are gonna doing something you may as well do it right for the next 2 years.
Because if you start doing it wrong again and again, 2 years becomes 5, then becomes 10, then you quit.
My most assinine mistake rested in setting weekly or monthly time frames for practicing my creating and connecting. Cute little Monkey Mind. I love you. But you were pretty dopey too.
I often get emails like “Hey Ryan! I pitched Entrepreneur 2 times. Why haven’t they responded?”
I respond: “Practice writing and connecting with top bloggers for 2 years.”
Ya wanna know why it is hard to get featured on top blogs? Because most bloggers are:
- impatient
- greedy
- delusional
- terrified of losing everything
- desperate
and allow their predominant fear to cloud their better judgment.
Bloggers featured on famous blogs practiced a few set skills almost every day for 1 to 2 to 5 years or longer.
You will need to do the same if you want to get featured on famous blogs.
1: Follow Your Fun and Freedom
Letting your fun, freeing driver pull you through sometimes highly uncomfortable actions is the way from unknown blogger to being everywhere.
Superstar bloggers allow their love of having fun and freeing themselves to override their fear of following the remaining tips. Especially tip #A1.
Immense natural beauty. Nueva Arenal, Costa Rica.
I love blogging. I love traveling. So I choose to do fun, freeing things even if said things terrify me at times. This is the path and intent toward inspiring a shit load of folks through famous platforms aka sites aka blogs aka news media outlets.
Blog predominantly for fun. And to free yourself. Set the table to BE the person who lands high profile features.
2: Write 1000 Words Daily for Practice
Open a Word document. Write 1000 words. Daily. Trash said doc after hitting 1 K.
Following this simple practice for years helped me land features on the world’s most famous blogs. Why? If you develop a skill, you get featured on high profile sites to show the skill off.
Developing my writing skills helped turn me from a complete loser with nothing to say (“I mean, who cares about what I have to say, anyway?” I thought, for years) to someone who writes boldly, bluntly and directly.
Note how I don’t dance around topics? That’s clarity.
It usually takes 6 months to 1 year of daily writing practice to move up in blogging circles. You impress top bloggers through practicing, not through bullshit smoke and mirrors or manipulative, lame-ass pitches.
Bust your writing ass. You like to write, right? So write. If you hate writing, podcast, create videos or become an Infographics guru. Practice in these areas. Daily.
The gap from “Nobody cares what I have to say” to getting featured on blogs with million member readerships is covered in private, through your diligent, persistent writing practice.
3: Build Your Friend Network of Established Pro Bloggers
How do you go from feeling like Blogging Non Grata from Nowheres-ville to being featured on famous blogs with million reader communities?
By *connecting* yourself to as many established, successful pro bloggers as humanly possible.
You do not *get* connected. This suggests passivity. You *connect* yourself to top pro bloggers.
Do this:
- comment on top blogs from your niche
- promote top bloggers via social media, your blog, your podcast, or anywhere else
- email top bloggers asking how you can help them
Guys, these simple, easy as hell actions – i.e., spending a few minutes to read and comment on a post, hitting retweet button, etc – played a HUGE role in me going from being a nobody to a somebody in my blogging niche.
This is so much fun when you commit to connecting with bloggers. You enjoy helping out peeps but also see that you have a voice and something valuable to share with the world. You *can* get featured on famous blogs. All of your friends (folks you connected to) will promote you, endorse you and support you on this fun, freeing, sometimes wild journey.
4: Seize and Hold this Concept as if Your Life Depends on it
It’s the practice, not the pitch.
Are you trying like hell to “hack” your way into guest posting fame? Lose the game. It’s the people, sheeple.
If you have nothing to pitch or your pitch is weak, you are wasting your time. Like all folks who whine after pitching Forbes 1, 3 or 30 times.
Like trying to sell funnel cakes beside a Weight Watcher’s convention, these pitches go almost completely ignored by blogging pros.
If however you practice, honing your creating and connecting skills over months and years, many world renowned blogging brands will approach you. Seriously. Happens to me 99% of the time. I practiced writing and connecting in the cyber shadows. World famous blogs (writers of; not the blogs themselves) featured me.
Be The Hunted. Not The Hunter. Develop your skills. Pay the bills. Get featured on top blogs.
5: But if You *DO* Pitch Do this….
Personalize every pitch.
Stress the benefits of the guest post you are pitching.
Make sure the post is a 100% match with the tone, brand voice and topic of the blog.
Practicing your writing, reading top blogs, and commenting on top blogs helps you confidently match a blog’s tone through your guest post, and also helps you create an enticing pitch that bloggers and assistants drool over.
I rarely pitch. But when I do – like for this Positively Positive post – it’s highly personalized and stresses the benefits that the community would gobble up with a spoon.
6:Publish Weekly or Bi-Weekly to Stay on the Radar
Stay on the blogging radar. Publish content once weekly. Or bi-weekly.
Unless you knock it out of the park with monthly postings you may fade into blogging oblivion (Or Mike Tyson’s Bolivian) unless you provide helpful, timely content weekly or bi-weekly.
Let the Blogging Big Dawgs know you are still out there, ready to pee in the tall grass with these pros.
Publish. Be seen. Be known.
7: Guest Post Like a Machine on Lower to Medium Profile Blogs
Guest posting is a way to get seen by a ton more folks than the number of folks who read your blog.
These folks are targeted, meaning, many are highly interest in your blogging niche.
If you feel like a nobody from nowhere, guest posting can give you the confidence and clarity that you have something special to share with the world.
Guest posting on a bunch of high profile blogs helped me pop up on the radar of even *higher* profile blogs. Like a blogging version of sharking your way up. Or moving up the guest posting food chain.
Practice writing like a freaking boss. Comment on top blogs. Promote top bloggers via social media, your blog and carrier pigeon.
Build a rep. So you are a somebody, from somewhere special, who’s going places.
8: Blog Comment Like a Machine
Write in-depth, 2-4 paragraph, valuable comments on top blogs.
Effective blog commenting puts you on the radar of the blogging big dawgs who are yearning to help ya earning by featuring you.
Blog commenting has been the foundational offsite element of my marketing/connecting/networking campaign.
Stand out as an up and coming blogger. Comment powerfully on top blogs from your niche. Position yourself to land major league features.
Recommended Resource: How to Build an Online Empire through Blog Commenting (eBook)
9: Step Inside the Mind of Someone Who Has Been There
I have been there. I can get you there.
Learning how to create and connect effectively, from a loving, fun space, gets easier when you learn from someone who has been there.
Study the blogging big dawgs in your niche and how they landed on top blogs.
Take notes. Put said notes into action.
10: Toss Salt over Your Shoulder 3 Times Daily
To cover all bases.
11: Think Mutual Manifestation over Manipulation
If I ever into any partnerships – business, guest posting, etc – I dwell on how the bond benefits both parties.
Hoards of struggling bloggers go da opposite way; they greedily or desperately grab at top bloggers, frantically trying to manipulate folks into doing favors or getting them featured on top blogs.
I have only received 34,243 such emails from desperate bloggers.
Shift your intent. So you don’t shit your intent.
Blog for fun, with love (Tip #1). Stop trying to desperately use or manipulate people. Love ’em. Help ’em. Serve ’em.
Ponder mutually beneficial partnerships, whether through guest posting or whatever strategy, and you position yourself to land guest posts on the world’s top blogs.
Your Turn
Are you struggling to land guest posts on high level blogs?
What tips can you add to this list.
