My
homeschool blog has become very popular. I get at least 2 requests a week for guest posts. I.e. people wanting to promote their own blogs are requesting to write a post on my blog. They will provide me with a well written post, so I get saved some time, perhaps not needing to write a post that day (saving my already addled brain). They get exposure.
This past month, I have been really struggling with these guest posts. As I suspected when the rush to write for my blog started, the writers would not be able to capture the voice and intent of my blog. The guest blogs don't fit well into my blog and they may even be turning off my readers.
Here's the problem. It is a homeschooling blog. It is more a journal and encouragement than instructional. There's a reason for that. It is my opinion that we homeschoolers didn't break away from traditional schooling to follow instructions. Yet most guest blogs I get try to give instructions on how to homeschool. Not only does it not fit into the spirit of my blog, but it is also laughable... you see, most of these people have ever homeschooled, so how are they giving instructions? I find that borderline insulting.
So I tried to lay out some guidelines. I said I would only take guest posts from people who added real value to the conversation, who preferably homeschooled. I forwarded each request to my rules and regs and they all came back and said "I can fit your guidelines". However, when they forwarded my their finished article it screamed "this person knows nothing about homeschooling" even though the blog had a sentence like "I was homeschooled for such-and-such amount of time".
Finally, I had to say no to guest blogs. So if you want to write a guest posts for my homeschool blog, (with the exceptions of actual homeschool bloggers) those are my reasons. And I posted my new rules.
So why am I still waking up each morning guest post requests? According to what I know about guest blogging, one of the main rules is to
GET TO KNOW THE BLOG'S CONTENT. So if you have visited my blog, you will find a link to my guest blog and ads rules at the top of the page. You are not getting to know my blog if you are missing that part. You are also not getting to know my blog if you are submitting potential guest blogs that don't fit the spirit of my blog, and so now we've come full circle.
Meanwhile, I am kind of happy that so many people are offering to guest post on my blog. It shows that I am getting attention. Unfortunately it's not necessarily the attention that I want,
Hmmm... I just had a thought. Maybe I should offer to trade guest blogs. You write on mine, I write on yours?
I'd love to hear what others think about this.
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