The Dangers of Using Contributing Authors on Your Blog

Using contributing authors on your blog is a sure way of easing the burden from you in terms of the time it takes to research, write and post your blog but, there are a few major pitfalls that you'll want to avoid so that you still control your blog and not your contributors.

What actually prompted me to write this post was the fact that I'd received an email from Feedblitz this morning showing that I'd updated my blog and so I was a little shocked knowing that I did nothing on it over the weekend. 

After I calmed down and realised that no one had hacked into my site, I was semi okay with the posts but on closer inspection, I saw red!

Here's what happened …

I submitted my blog to a service that allowed people to automatically post unique content to my blog on a regular basis.  And, since it wasn't compulsory to keep my blog in the system, I gave it a try.  First off, I didn't even get confirmation that my blog had been accepted into the system which is why I thought I'd been hacked when I received an email from Feedblitz indicating that I'd updated my blog.

My real contentions with this system which, you may have recognised has remained nameless, are these:

Too Many Promotions

Of the four blog posts that appeared on my blog, every single one of them was an obvious promotion of someone elses product.  Do I object to using promotions on your blog?  No, but where possible, I like to stick to a ratio of 4 or 5 to 1, meaning that if I do promote someone elses products it's only after I've given you some solid "how to" information that you can use and which, won't cost you a penny.

Duplicate Promotions

There is only one thing worse than too many promotions … having duplicate promotions on the same day!  One contributing author wrote two blogs posts about the same promotion (albeit both articles had a different spin) and, both articles were posted to my blog on the same day.   

Crappy Promotions 

Whilst not a word wildly accepted in my British culture as coming from a Christian lady, a) I know it's wildly accpeted in the US from whence comes most of my readers and b) I can't think of a better word that describes what I want to say here. :-) 

One promotion was for a free report that consisted of one page (about six small paragraphs), in the form of a sales letter and, which told you NOTHING about what you might find inside the actual product being offered, except for the fact that the creator makes almost half a million dollars per year using this method and, that it was about listbuilding.

I mean … come on!  I'm used to meaty reports or teleseminars and webinars where guys promoting their products give you the meat and the potatoes, making you want more of what you've just been hearing.  The report was so poor, that I had to conclude that the final product couldn't be any good either and so that post had to go.

I did love the promotion about Dan Kennedy's product though but I personally want to check it out myself and then I may do a blog post on it thereafter since I have a policy that I do not promote products I have not personally reviewed or used … Period! 

I admit that part of me felt relieved that my blog was being updated so frequently, but I had to ask the question, "at what cost?" 

Consequently, I have removed all four blog postings from trishjones.com and from now on, I will stick to writing the posts myself or, get some articles written for me that I can inject with my own personality and my own views before I post them to my blog.

If you do allow other bloggers to contribute articles to your blog, I would only do so on the basis that you vet the posts before they are submitted and, I would personally insist that they provide your readers with good quality information they can use.

Apologies to those of you who had received the Feedblitz update today, clicked on the links only to find an empty page.  I'm sure I'll get your vote of confidence that you want quality information, not quantity selling.

To Your Online Success,

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