Would you like to get your work in front of tens of thousands ... even hundreds of thousands ... of readers?

One of the simplest ways to do that is by guest posting: being a "guest" author on a large blog. Typically, you write a piece of 500 - 1000 words, and you get a "bio" which you write yourself, with a bit of information about you / your writing and a link to your website, if you have one.

I've been doing this for getting on for nine years now, and I've had my writing published on dozens of different sites: some with quite a small readership, some with a rapidly growing audience, and some that are so well known in my corner of the internet that I felt quite daunted submitting my work! It's always been a great experience to guest post, though ... and a major way in which I've built my own audience and sold my ebooks.

Important: You don't need a blog of your own to guest post, and you certainly don't need a large readership. You just need to be able to write reasonably well about a topic that's a good fit for your "host" blog.

So why should you give guest posting a go?

If your own blog has a measly three readers, you might well feel you're writing into a vacuum. When you guest post, you'll have thousands of readers, and you'll likely get at least a few comments, tweets, or even emails from people who enjoyed your post. This can be really encouraging.

When you're a new freelance writer, it's important to have samples of your work to show prospective clients: these are sometimes called "clips" or your "portfolio". Guest posts are great for this as they're published publicly, online (so they're easy for anyone to take a look at), and they have your name on. 

While guest posters normally write for free (the reward is the "bio" on your post and the exposure that brings), some blogs do pay for guest posts. You can find a handy list of paying blogs on the Make a Living Writing Blog here:

Even sites that don't normally pay one-off guest posters may be interested in hiring you as a staff writer. When I started out as a freelance blogger, my first paying gigs came as a direct result of writing free guest posts.

If you want to know more about using guest posting to land paying gigs, check out The Blogger's Guide to Freelancing. Don't forget your 35% off code, valid for all my Blogger's Guides: alinewsletter.

If you have anything for sale, whether it's a book, your manuscript editing service, an app, your content writing service ... then guest posting is a great way to promote it. When someone reads your post, they get to know a little about your expertise with the topic at hand – making them more confident about buying from you.

Some blogs do prefer that you don't promote paid products in your bio (e.g. Write to Done forbids this), so do check their guest post guidelines if you're relying on using your bio in that way. Personally, I've found that guest posting does not work well to sell novels, though your mileage may vary on this!

Hopefully I've encouraged you to at least give guest posting some thought! If you want some practical tips for actually writing your post, take a look at How to Craft a Guest Post That's Likely to be Accepted.