What Happens When you Guest Post on John Chow?

As you may know, John Chow was good enough to run a guest post from me last week. It was called A little Mind Trick to Keep you Motivated.

Many readers have asked me about the effect on traffic here, so this post is to answer the various questions, but first let me tell you the process I went through so you can follow the steps in case you want to do the same.

Getting a post onto John Chow Dot Com

I don’t want to rehash the whole process and benefits of getting a guest post published on a really big blog, you can read about that in Getting a guest post published. But the two key aims I had in getting a post onto John’s site were to drive more traffic to mine, and to enhance my credibility as a serious blogger. So how did I do?

The answer is very easily and very simply! When John told us on his blog that he was heading to China for a month, he also told us that he would be looking for guest bloggers while he was away, and that people should email him any ideas.

I had a think about the type of blogger who reads his site. I guessed a lot them might be aspirational bloggers – either fairly new to the game, or in the middle phases of their blogging careers. On that basis I selected a post I’d had in mind for some time – one about overcoming motivational problems in that hard, middle phase of blogging, when you’ve been working like a dog and you’re still not really earning any money.

I wrote the post, emailed it to John (both in the body of the email and as an attachment) and crossed my fingers. Nothing happened! I was in limbo for three days, and had already decided to follow John up, when the post popped up from his site on my RSS reader!

What I did when the post went live

I was able to change my plans for the rest of that day to be on hand to deal with the comments. Although there were 29 comments, it didn’t really entail a great deal of work for me, as many of them were one liners not needing an answer. John and I both Tweeted the post a couple of times, and I eagerly anticipated the traffic rushing through to my site.

Unfortunately, I’d sent the post to John before reading Jamie Harrop’s advice. He suggested a guest poster should add a further link at the bottom of a post – totally logical as people who have enjoyed an article may not bother to scroll back up to the top to find out who wrote it! I suspect this cost me in terms of traffic, and it’s not a mistake I will make again

What happened then?

Traffic

I think I may have built my expectations up a little too high. I had visions of my server barely hanging on against the onslaught of John’s rushing hordes! In reality I experienced a strong day on traffic, but not an exceptional one. I had 107 unique visitors in the 24 hour period directly from John’s site, and on the day I had about 30% more traffic than usual. I would guess some came from the aforementioned Twitter activity.

Subscribers

Subscribers on the day were around double what I normally get, but I have to say that subscriber numbers are very inconsistent on the site at the moment, so it’s hard to draw serious conclusions.

Twitter Followers

I had never considered this as an objective for writing the post, but it is the area of most impact. My Twitter followers went through the roof! Despite not mentioning my Twitter name in the post, my followers smashed through the 1000 barrier on the day and just kept climbing afterwards to over 1200.

Credibility

This isn’t really a measurable, but I suspect that my credibility as a blogger was enhanced by the experience and it should have brought my name to the attention on other pro bloggers, so I need to build on that with more guest posts on other big sites.

Follow up With John

I emailed John to thank him for the opportunity, and got one straight back telling me he’d be happy to run further guest posts – an offer I will take him up on.

Summary

• I did get good traffic to the site, but not as much as I’d expected – perhaps my fault for not posting a second link
• Subscribers were significantly higher than normal – so welcome to the new readers, and thanks
• The effect on my Twitter followers was dramatic, and next time (if allowed) I will post a link to my Twitter profile
• Credibility? You tell me!

Are you following me on Twitter yet? If not, please do so – I give good value to my followers. @mikecj

What are you experiences of guest posting? Please share in comments.

If you enjoyed this, then you should also read:

1/ Getting a guest post published

2/ More time for blogging – the two hour blogging session (Video)

3/ Useful resources for new bloggers