Are Guest Blogging Contests Worth It?

In this article, Melvin of MelvinBlog.com gives his take on guest blogging competitions which have sprung up recently. Join this guest blogging community.

I’ve said many times, guest blogging is one of strategies I’m seriously implementing even from the start of the year. I’m actually working super hard getting as much high quality guest posts as possible to big blogs and see how I can reap all the benefits.

But then another thing happened. And those are the growth of these guest blogging contests. These are just like the normal guest blogging but instead of the normal one, what it does is kind of incentivize the whole thing. Of course like any contest, many were enticed to join.

I was eventually one of them and although I know I didn’t work as hard as most people do, it’s all worth it. It’s ironic because just couple of days back I blasted these guest blogging contests and stated my reason why I dislike them.

In that post briefly I covered that the main intention of guest blogging becomes different with contests. Instead of providing superb content, the guest blogger would try to win the contest. On the flip side, there’s also a massive change in reader’s anticipation. With normal guest blogging, people read the articles as it is. While with contests, most of the readers are contestants as well hence they really wouldn’t read it, instead they’d observe. In short, the benefits a guest blogger can get is non-existent with these contests.

Enough rant. It’s not that I hate it, in fact I like it just with some doubt in my mind with the results. But then I learned these things after winning the contest here in Blog Godown. It somehow changed my perspective on guest blogging contests because of the things I’ve realized. Anyways here they are:

• Competition is there, whether you like it or not- When you are part of  a competition, one thing I observed is that the other contestants are usually the commenters of your guest post first and fast. They’re accommodating, there will be times when they’d give you a pat at the back. But the truth behind it is that they’re tracking their status and the overall progress of the contest. Competition is so tight in any contests. Even if its just commenting contests or whatever type of contests. And, hey! you would have realized that its fun competing!
• You get into these friendly circles – I always preach that blogging is all about establishing relationships. The good thing with guest blogging contests is that it puts you instantly into the little community of a blog. The first time I actually heard about Blog Godown is when the contest started and honestly I never had an idea what the blog was all about. So what eventually happened is that I started connecting with these people who joined this contest and boom, I have a new reader in them!
• You will learn (surprisingly) – A lot of people use this phrase a lot and to be honest I’m not too big on it. But with Blog Godown’s contest, I learned a lot of things. As I’ve said, I never heard of Blog Godown before and I thought it was just another blog filled with ads and etc. So when the contest started, I thought I was the only qualified contestant (sorry, I’m arrogant). Long story short, as I was reading all the entries I realized that hey I’m learning a lot with these entries. Eventually I bookmarked some of them for future reference.
• If you win – great, if not – move on and improve - One of my mistakes is always my crappy grammar. I’m not a native speaker and so sometimes I get messy with my statements. But by writing more and more and more, we improve. I get a lot of emails everyday asking for tips on how I get to be able to publish so many guest posts. My answer is “just write your article”. I mean instead of worrying about so many metrics and stuffs, why not just sit down and write. Over time you will get better and in this business, good writing means a lot.

These are 4 small things that I learned specifically by joining the contest here in this blog and I’m sure you have your own stories as well. Guest blogging is a deadly technique to get massive REAL traffic to your blog. I always like to use Viperchill as an example and for right now not a lot of people are doing it right.

By constantly doing things, we improve and with these contests, it gives another layer of reason why we should do it more. What is your say?