a single source, nothing corroborates it

Write for someone else's much bigger audience

One article on a larger publication can out-read a year of your own site: a guest piece drew around a hundred and twenty seven thousand views against roughly three hundred thousand for a whole blog that year. Outside the few top tier names, publishers are short of good material and will run submissions from strangers when the quality and fit are right, so aim at mid-sized platforms rather than the famous ones. Find the targets from the platform's own publication leaderboard and follow each one's stated submission instructions instead of guessing.

The method

1. 01

   Write for someone else's much larger publication when you can - one guest article can out-read everything on your own site.

2. 02

   Publish some of these posts on other people's sites for the reach, and still promote them to your own audience.

3. 03

   Pitch mid-sized content platforms rather than top-tier press: outside of Wired, TechCrunch and the New York Times, publishers are actively short of good material and will run submissions from strangers if the quality and fit are there.

4. 04

   Find placement targets from the Medium publication leaderboard, and read each publication's stated submission instructions rather than guessing at an approach.

What it returned

• 2014

  A post Justin wrote for Sprintly in November 2014 drew 126,850 views, against roughly 300,000 for his whole blog that year and 45,103 for his best own post.

• 30

  His most viral posts have hit 30 times his normal monthly traffic in a single day; Justin Jackson's post Words has drawn 250,000 visitors

Sources

• 2014: a year of making stuffJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · What were my biggest hits of 2014? · undated
• How to fix podcasting’s critical flawNathan Barry · nathanbarry.com · Blog posts · 2018-10-22
• SEO for Developers: Reaching the Front Page of Google without being SpammyCory Zue · coryzue.com · Getting Published · 2017-10-10