Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Your Words

I received an interesting email today. A gentleman asked if I accept guest posts for this blog. Well, to be quite frank, this issue has never come up before or, if it has, I don't remember it!

I thought about the idea for about 5 seconds and decided I have no problem with it. One of the many things I do here is to promote other Taoist and like-minded blogs. I have several large lists of links in the right sidebar and I write posts about new additions to the sidebar plus I frequently quote (with an accompanying link) from what my blogging compatriots are thinking and writing. Consequently, allowing guest posts would merely extend what I'm already trying to accomplish anyway.

For one thing it would probably help some start-up blogs -- those with very limited or no traffic. It might also assist some of you who have only a small following of dedicated readers.

Look, this blog is NOT a widely popular blog. I don't receive thousands of visitors per day, but my numbers have gone through my low roof in the past week or so because of two links from Zen Habits.

For example, before last week the most visitors to this blog in any one day was 128. A week ago today it hit 152. On Monday, it climbed to 278 and yesterday -- and this boggles my pea-sized brain -- I had 609 visitors. While I certainly don't expect to see a number like that again for a long, long time, as of 10:00 am PDT there have been 130 visitors; more than the previous record of 128. In addition to those numbers, there are also over 220 feed subscribers.

So, for those of you with a mere handful of daily visitors, writing a guest post here might help promote what you're writing on your blog. I'm more than willing to help out, particularly since my traffic increase is due entirely to someone else's efforts (Leo Babauta of Zen Habits) and not mine.

If you're interested, send me an email. Provided you don't physically threaten someone or write that Adolf Hitler or George W. Bush is the embodiment of the most perfect Tao, the only editing I will do is for punctuation and spelling. Beyond that, your words are your words. (This is the same tact I use as editor with the columnists for Greener Times.) Such posts will have a title that begins with "Guest Post -- The Title of Your Submission" and I will insert a paragraph at the beginning that states this is a guest post with your name in bold. I strongly suggest you place a link to your blog somewhere in your piece, but, if not, I will include it in the intro.

I'm a strong believer in the concept of paying it forward and, in this small way, I'm trying to do just that.

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