PostJoint Review: Guest Blogging Platform

Filed under Guest Posts by on December 7, 2012 at 1:36 am {2,034 comments}

PostJoint ReviewThis is my PostJoint Review. PostJoint is a new platform that brings bloggers and promoters together through content marketing. I like the idea of the site – there are plenty of blogs that are looking for high quality content and plenty of bloggers/internet marketers/SEO consultants and other marketers looking to promote a business through guest blogging. PostJoint tries to bring these two parties together.

I can see the utility of such a tool. The site is still in beta, and it would be very interesting to follow the site through its evolution, which it seems to be doing fast. I don’t want to be too harsh with my PostJoint review at this point of time, because I want to give them the benefit of doubt when I find any feature lacking. That being said, it is all about providing value to both the parties – bloggers should be able to find great content and marketers should be able to find great blogs.

How PostJoint Works

Before delving into the full review, just a quick introduction about how PostJoint works. If you know it already, feel free to skip this section.

The way PostJoint works is that a marketer or anyone who wants to promote her website or even her brand creates a piece of content. She then posts it on PostJoint and waits for offers. Several bloggers who are ready to post this content, make an offer to publish the piece of content on their website. The site currently allows up to 5 offers. Once you get 5 offers, you can now choose which one to accept. Some are free and for some the marketer pays a fee to get the content published.

If the marketer doesn’t like the 5 offers she receives, she can go back to the drawing board and resubmit the article for new offers and also make any modifications she might like. The process repeats.

As of now, in beta, PostJoint is free to join for both bloggers and marketers. This might change in the near future though as the site gains more traction. If I had to give them one advice, it would be not to rush through the process of asking people for money to sign up and instead first make a good following of bloggers and marketers and then start charging for some premium service.

PostJoint Review: The Good

  • Ease and Convenience: Traditionally, finding guest posting opportunities is a lot of work. You need to do a lot of research and dig deep into several blogs to find an active blog that accepts guest posts. For the bloggers, they don’t have a very good way to get paid for guest posts on their blogs unless some advertiser contacts them directly. PostJoint solves both these problems through their platform. Granted, you still need to do your homework because not all blogs are on PostJoint, but it is a great place to start and I find it promising. Also, I am not aware of any other site with the same idea (if you do, please let me know in the comments).
  • Ability to Reach out to Multiple Blogs: PostJoint allows you to discover a number of blogs and create content for them. If you are willing to pay for your post to be published on another blog, as SEO marketers might be, then you have an ever wider array of options. In fact, you can create a lasting and working relationship with a blog in your niche through PostJoint. As a content marketer, you don’t need to worry about spending all your time on finding where to post and instead concentrate more on the content itself. That’s a big advantage.
  • Text and Signature Links: PostJoint allows for two links per article and they are not restricted in the signature. In fact, some of the posts that I have personally submitted don’t have a link in my signature but instead have both the links in the body of the article because that’s where I thought there would be maximum benefit for me. Obviously you want the links to be relevant but I like the fact that you have the ability to include links in the body of the post. Compare this to something like article marketing at EzineArticles where you are only allowed links in the signature (they sometimes allow no-follow links in the body).
  • Bloggers can Make Money: I think it is a very good avenue for bloggers to make money from their blogs and can help diversify online income streams. Don’t overlook this fact – so far, PostJoint has attracted blogs that aren’t “there yet” and don’t have tens of thousands of visitors a day. Through posting good content, they might be able to make some money off posting good content that they need for their blog anyway. Of course your blog should be good enough that the marketer would want to pay to be featured there, but you can always start off small. In addition, if you don’t mind guest posts, you can rinse and repeat and accept multiple guest posts for your blog and thus make a steady income stream (this will be the case if there are more marketers than bloggers).
  • Quick, Easy and Diverse Backlinks: What really attracts me to PostJoint is that it is really quick. You don’t have to craft weird search queries in Google to find blogs that accept guest posts (although the site is small now and doesn’t have too many bloggers in all different niches but I am hoping that will change in the future). Niches of internet marketing, blogging and SEO have a good number of blogs already. For marketers, they can get as diverse a set of backlinks as they like by publishing content relevant to any industry they like. They are also getting real backlinks from different sites which is always helpful for search engines.

 

PostJoint Review: The Bad

Let me start this section by saying that PostJoint has posted on their blog about improvements in the future and so some of these might be improved or fixed then. I don’t want to concentrate on minor details but on the bigger picture.

  • Quality of Participating Blogs: This is a serious problem, and I understand the site is relatively new and hopefully in the future the quality of participating blogs might improve. However, it is a serious impediment to real growth. I have had offers from publishers who want to publish my post for $50 and their website is, in all aspects of traffic and quality, far inferior to this blog. That doesn’t add up. I can provide really high quality content to the participating blogs (I’ve even published on ProBlogger, so I know my content). However, I don’t want to provide my best quality content to inferior blogs, even if for free. There are options, even though it could be harder work. Also, I found that blogs are very concentrated in the making money online category and not so many in other categories.
  • Lack of Control Over Offers: I don’t like the lack of control as to who I want to get offers from. For example, I might not be willing to pay more than $30 for publishing my post on a blog, or someone else might want it only for free because she believes her content is of very high quality. Also, they might want to limit the niches of blogs – I have gotten publishing offers from a cooking blog when I wrote about SEO!
  • Limited Scope: I don’t think PostJoint is still an open and fair marketplace for guest bloggers. This is because of several reasons. For instance, I, as a content provider, am not able to charge blogs for publishing my content. I think this sounded “wrong” to them, but as a writer, I can definitely provide something very unique to the participating blogs and if they are not popular enough or cannot benefit my blog enough, I want to be able to charge them. Also, content provides are not able to register as bloggers/publishers right now, which seems too restrictive because I would like to be able to both write for other blogs and get backlinks and also be able to feature some others’ work on my own blog.

I think it will be an interesting journey for PostJoint from here on. It is still new and there are issues to iron out and they are aware of it. However, if they can do it right, I believe they can be pretty successful. Post Google penguin (to some extent even panda), the importance and appeal of guest blogging is only going to increase. It is a nice void to fill. The only question is, can PostJoint do it right.

Have you joined PostJoint? What has your experience been with them so far?

Photo Credit: Tetra Pak

Making money through affiliate marketing – Does it pay off?

Filed under Guest Posts by on January 28, 2012 at 3:26 pm {245 comments}

This is a guest post from Grace Ruskin.

During such hard economic conditions throughout the world, a large number of people are desperately looking for some passive income sources to boost their present income level and meet their monthly debt obligations. With the widespread use of the internet, online marketing has become an increasingly popular option to generate cash and use it in paying off your debt obligations. Have you ever heard of affiliate marketing as an option to make fast online cash? If answered no, you should educate yourself on this as this is one of the best ways to boost your monthly cash flow and use it in paying off your debt obligations. Make money affiliate marketing tips are available in the internet and you should go through them in order to ensure best returns. Here are some tips that you may consider.

 

  • Knowing your audience is very important: If you are looking for the most successful way to use the affiliate programs, you should predict and also meet the needs of the online audience. Initially, before you start off with it, you have to consider the reason they are coming to your blog. Are you providing the exact thing that they are looking for? Always try to be sure that the product that you are promoting provides an effective solution to the problems of the visitors. Put ads that are relevant to the theme of the website so that it does not seem irrelevant. 

     

  • Help the online visitors: Remember that the affiliate ads are nothing but the additional resources that complement the content of your website and your utmost job is to add value to your content by making it useful, unique and informative as much as possible. If you are dealing with books, do not put up a list predicting the visitors to click on the links and purchase them. Instead you can write a detailed review of the books and use the affiliate ads to point them to the exact direction. Make use of your resources. 

     

  • Be loyal to your audience: It is very tough to get a bulk of audience who are interested in the content of your website and when you already grab them, you need to value them so that they stick to your website and remain loyal to you. You should not break their trust by promoting something that you personally do not believe in. You should understand that it is the repeat visitors that drive the main traffic and they are the ones who will provide you back links and also recommend your blog to other people. 

    Before you become an affiliate for a merchant company, you have to choose the products carefully so that you do not promote something that you do not support personally. Make money affiliate marketing is the most vital part of earning online cash and you should follow the tips mentioned in order to ensure maximum returns with minimum risk.

    Grace Ruskin is a professional writer and has immense knowledge on various aspects of the US online money making industry. She has contributed her articles to several websites and some topics covered by her are earning money through pay per lead affiliate programs, make money affiliate marketing tip ( http://www.debtconsolidationcare.com/affiliate/ ), importance of SEO in internet marketing and many more.

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