Getting Into The Minds Of People
I find people absolutely fascinating and there are a few things that I have come across in the last year or so that blow my mind.
The first thing is that I was looking for guest posters for my websites. My goal was to write less content but have regular content for my blogs. I couldn't at that stage afford to pay content writers for all the content I was hoping to publish... and quite frankly I was tired.
I started advertising on social media, I sent out newsletters to my subscribers... and I even went so far as to contact other bloggers.
Nobody was interested and I had wasted a lot of precious time and effort trying to get articles for my website that I could have used much more productively just writing on my websites!
Imagine my surprise when one day I was messing around online and I just for some reason decided to add my own gigs to Fiverr. I said for $5 I will publish your guest post on my mommy blog. If you add another $35 I will write it too!
I made my first $40 sale within an hour! Crazy right?
And the guest posts flew in so fast I could barely keep up. I still find it so amusing that I had spent the better part of 6 months begging to for articles to publish (at no charge) yet I put a price on it the crowds go wild!
Since about June this year I have had a lot of people start contacting me directly on my website asking for a guest post. I then wrote a lovely long standard email reply that was chatty and explained my charge for publishing guest posts, my guidelines and how everything works.
Most of the replies to that email were along the lines of not wanting to pay or trying to negotiate my rate... and the majority of articles submitted were rejected due to the low quality.
Then about a month ago I was having a crazy busy day and I got an email from someone asking about guest posting and I was so tired of the normal replies that I just replied with: "Yes I offer guest posting, it is $20 a post."
No chatting, no friendliness, no guidelines, nothing.
The reply came 5 minutes later - "Great! Please explain how it works - can I pay via Paypal?"
Interesting right? So I wanted to see if this was just a coincidence or there was something to this.
This is now my standard response and you know what? It works!
I get a lot of responses now and in addition to that the responses are not normally negotiations over price. The norm is a straight acceptance and asking where to from there.
Plus the quality of articles has gone up big time, with most articles being suitable.
This just goes to show that it is important to try out different things and play around with our responses to people.
Recent Comments
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That is awesome news. We learn so many skills here and it is definitely a possibility to use those to earn money in multiple ways. You have proven that already. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Lynne, this sounds interesting! I pretty new at this so I don't think Im ready for this yet. Not sure I completely understand lol. But I'm bookmarking this for the future!
Cheers,
Suzanne
Hi, Lynne, there can be no accounting for things sometimes, as you say it is a matter of rolling with it and tweaking as we go. Thanks for sharing your experiences, real food for thought.
Hey Lynne, I've also been getting a few requests a week to guest post on my sites. Turns out guest posts (or backlinks) are a hot commodity. Thanks again for getting me onto those Fiverr gigs last year around this time. Its been my major source of income this year.
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There's some interesting psychology happening there. People respond differently when they believe you're serious. When there's ambiguity, they respond hoping to take advantage. Good observation!
~Bob
Crazy right Bob? But I am giggling all the way to Paypal.