We have all been there – faced with the challenge of starting a new blog or website, we find ourselves without enough quality content and certainly no reputation. Building both types of influence – the type that search engines use to classify our sites and also the more abstract type that gives our site respect among peers – is vital for success in the digital world. Many people use guest blog posts as a way to increase the level of content offered by their site, but how can you convince others to donate their talents when you do not have a solid reputation? We will discuss tactics that you can employ to secure additional content for your newly created site.

Nothing Is Free

This is the most important concept to remember when attempting to gain guest posts for your site. You will need to make concessions or offer something in exchange for a guest writer agreeing to provide you with content. There are a number of ways you can gain the services of a guest writer, but you’ll need to be creative. When you consider that your site has no reputation and therefore cannot offer a lot of instant benefit for the writer in question, you may have to provide them with a greater amount of perks in exchange for their services.

Provide Links and Credit

This is one of the most established ways to get a guest writer to acquiesce to writing on your site. While this works extremely well when you have an established site, there is less incentive for someone to use this route when they are not guaranteed any additional PR from the backlink. However, some writers are open to the idea of getting their name and site out there and will take a gamble by writing an article for you in the hopes that your site will take off at some point in the future. You will want to be clear with your terms; most offer a by-line and backlinks to the guest writer’s site or blog in exchange for the content.

Offer Advertising

You can sweeten the pot for guest writers by offering them their own advertisement on your page in exchange for a guest blog or post. Whether they wish to advertise a product or wish that you end up pinging lists of their articles in a feed, the benefits to them may be enough to persuade them to go along with the offer. There are a variety of formats in which you can display an ad; text links, image banners and pop-ups may all be offered to the guest writer in exchange for their services.

Offer Modest Compensation

If you are willing to give the guest writer a by-line and backlink, you may wish to add to the incentive by providing a small amount of pay to lure them in to writing for you. Rather than pinging lists of potential writers for ones that will write for free, try offering both credit and half of what would be considered a normal rate for a given article.

You may discover that by combining these suggested tactics, you can provide a guest writer with enough incentive to write for you – even if you are just getting your website or blog started!