Two weeks ago, my first professionally edited article, Putting Freedom on a Pedestal, was published on the new Cult content platform operated by Honeypot.
It is a lengthy article with about 2700 words (8 pages) about my developer journey transitioning from being a programming kid into getting my first real job, going through multiple schools, and finally reaching freedom in life as a professional developer working from home.
It took me a few hours to write this article, and in this post, I want to share my results and talk about the outcomes of writing the mentioned article as a guest post on another platform.
The Idea of Guest Posting
Writing an article for a different website or publisher, then your own website is called guest posting. The operator of a usually larger platform allows the author to publish his work to get exposure to a broader audience. In return, the author writes the content exclusively and free of charge.
The platform gets content for free, and the author gets exposure. That’s usually the deal. And it was the same in my case. I wrote the article for free, and in exchange for that, they linked back to my website and my social accounts (except my YouTube channel, but let’s not go into too much detail here).
Working with an Editor
The best part of writing this article was to get access to a professional editor. It was fascinating to see how a person with better language skills can transform my story into a piece that stands out. Also, the article is easy to read and lets the reader dive into my story while going through the paragraphs.
Yes, it took some time to see the result. It took weeks (or months) between writing my article and getting access to the edited version until the final version got published. But it was definitely worth the back and forth. I learned a lot about how to structure an article to make it more readable and enjoyable for the reader.
No doubt that working with an editor is the best experience I took out from this guest posting adventure. I’d recommend anyone who never had access to an editor to write an article for somebody else to experience what an editor can do with your story.
Getting Access to a Broader Audience
I’m not sure about this one. The contact I had told me that there are thousands of developers reading the articles published on their platform. I do not have access to their analytics, so I cannot say how many views my article got.
What I can tell is that I did not get a lot of feedback. Honestly, I hardly got any feedback at all.
“True success is freedom, and freedom has always been my life goal.”
Be inspired by @CHBernasconiC‘s journey of taking responsibility for his #programming career & see where he ended up! https://t.co/65LXT1ZVgV
— Honeypot (@honeypotio) June 16, 2020
Honeypot sent a tweet, and I tweeted about it myself. We both did not drive enough traffic to the article to generated feedback in the form of tweets.
My 15+ years developer journey got featured on @honeypotio READs today! 🔥https://t.co/vkb9kB5asS
— Claudio Bernasconi (@CHBernasconiC) June 16, 2020
Two weeks after the article was published (while writing this article), I had a hard time finding the article buried in all the other articles on their platform. A content platform lives from adding a lot of new content, which leads to individual pieces being buried quickly.
From what I can tell, I did not gain followers on Twitter or subscribers on YouTube from this article. At least, there were no apparent bumps recognizable in the analytics.
What I Learned from My Guest Post
Working with an editor is a great experience. As I said before, it was the best part of my guest posting adventure.
Just because the platform has a big audience does not mean that your article gets exposed to all of them. In my case, I’m guessing only a few people read the article.
It is hard to say if the quality was not good enough, if the article was not interesting enough, or what other reasons might be that my article did not gain traction. It was not shared on Twitter (I did not even get tagged once), I did not receive any feedback – I’m not sure if anyone read the article besides a close friend of mine and the editor.
Would I Write a Guest Post Again?
I thought about it for a while, and I cannot say if I will write a guest post again. In my case, I did not get results that would make this a definite yes. I learned along the way – it was not a failure.
For technical articles, I’d do it again. I believe technical content works better. If you help people fixing their problem when they look for a solution, they will let you know about it, and you know you made an impact.
When it comes to more personal content, like the life story in my case, I’d prefer publishing it on my own website. It is a story about my life, about me, and why not put it on my blog where people might want to read it when they already know about me.
I understand that reading the life story of a random person on the internet might not attract many people. If you don’t know me, you won’t connect easily with my story. That’s why I see the topic of my guest post not being a good fit for the platform it was published on.
If you’re a blogger yourself, I’d love to talk to you about your experience with guest posting, and maybe I can learn something from your guest posting journey or learn a few things from reading mine.
