Collabration – Getting Free Content for Your Site and Blog

Getting high quality, free content for your site or blog isn’t that hard. There are plenty of webmasters glad to provide an article or post if you let them have a link back to their own blog or site, and some budding freelancers are willing to write to spec just for byline and experience.

The deal is to ensure that you are fair and equitable. Some unscrupulous website owners will play the ‘sample scam’ – posting a fake ‘job’ on well known freelance marketplaces and asking each writer that bids on their job to provide a sample written to specification to ‘qualify’ them for employment. Then the ‘buyer’ disappears with the ‘samples’ and the ‘job’ dissolves – because the unscrupulous website owner has already gotten what he or she needed.

This makes some freelancers leery. However, there are ones out there that would welcome the chance to start building a portfolio – and being ‘published’ is sometimes worth more than the cash in hand, as it carries enough cachet to secure them jobs in the future. Finding these can be as simple as posting a ‘wanted ad’ or spreading the word via the social network.

The other option, trading links for content, is common enough. Some put it down saying it bleeds PageRank – but if you have sculpted your site correctly you should have room for some outbound links. Send out feelers to blogs you respect and ask them to guest – recognition is flattering and they will likely be happy to write for a link. They might even return the favor eventually, and you can get a link back.

Of course, you want to carefully monitor the content you put on your site, so ride close herd and be the final editor. Be respectful – it is their byline after all – but make sure you only have content on your site or blog that you don’t mind having your name attached to as well.

Hopefully these tips can help you grow your site more quickly, without breaking your budget!