[Please see the new 2014 versions of MyBlogGuest growth report here]
These have been fun and crazy two years (actually 2 years and a few months). My Blog Guest, my first huge project, has been growing steadily and at some point I thought we were lucky that that was not a sudden huge growth. The way (and the rate) we were developing was a blessing for us because we had time to solve issues we came across on the way.
The hardest part about MyBlogGuest was that we were the first. Our platform is unique in many ways. The tools we have been developing are completely ours. We had no examples to follow, no competitors to beat and no one whose experience we had to learn from.
That’s the main reason I’ve enjoyed the ride. And I still love every day of running the site: lots of invaluable experience daily.
MyBlogGuest has NOT been built to earn money. We started as the forum with no monetization plan behind it. All I wanted was to build contacts with bloggers and learn from that.
The way we’ve been running it has always been the same: we have been listening to every single word our members are saying. We are following their recommendations and feature suggestions. And we are working hard every day to make it a better tool for everyone who is using it.
We have our strong and weak points. I am a control freak who is always seeking to make a perfect product – this is why we have never stopped working: MyBlogGuest is always the work in progress.
When I started MyBlogGuest, I had no idea it would once become my priority. It was a hobby. And because I enjoyed running it so much, it quickly grew into something bigger.
The Team
Today we are lucky have a great team of people working on MyBlogGuest:
Michael is the head of our development team. He is my brother and the person who has been running MyBlogGuest from day 1. He is the one who implements all our users’ feature suggestions. Without him, there would be no MyBlogGuest.
Sana is our awesome administrator. She manages customer support, helps new-comers and answers all questions. Sana is my right hand and we need a separate post to describe all she is doing for us and how much we love her for that!
Phil is our Gallery mod.
He keeps an eye on the quality of all the content being posted there.
Louis is also our moderator as well as one of the oldest members of MyBlogGuest.
I’ve known him for ages!
Deborah is our community building strategist. She moderates our Twitter chats, promotes our users’ guest posts and managers our social media accounts.
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And lastly, Ann, who you probably know since you are reading this blog now. I do the rest of less important stuff. 🙂
We have not built a perfect platform (yet) but we take pride in our customer support and community building efforts!
MyBlogGuest Freebies
My philosophy has always been the same: MyBlogGuest will always be 100% usable for free. We started as a free platform. None of the initially free features has been made paid since then.
Thus we have a few great free tools and resources which will always remain free:
The Forum
When we started, I had no idea where we were heading. So the simple forum interface made perfect sense then. We have then tweaked it a bit to improve structure. Everyone joining MyBlogGuest can build contacts using the forum, send PM, use “follow up” reminders, etc.
Sana is also browsing the forums daily to make sure everyone gets help. She also collects the best offers from it into one great “Featured Offers” thread which you can subscribe to be updated of most recent and most powerful opportunities.
For more insight into our features, see how our members are using MyBlogGuest: Here’s our official Youtube Playlist for our users’ video reviews and tutorials. So play all of them to discover *your* favorite free feature.
The Free Resources
Since guest blogging is such a widely misunderstood tactic, we have done our best to promote our own way to use it. The way we firmly believe in. The best ways to access that information are:
- Join our Twitter chats weekly: each Thursday 11 a.m. EDT / 3 p.m. GMT
- Download our free formatting checklist
- Download our guest blogging eBook
The Past and the Future
That’s been a fun ride and we are not planning to stop. We will definitely keep coming up with new features and options. Stay tuned!
When we launched our Infographics Gallery, one of our very smart users suggested that we should create the infographic on how MyBlogGuest has been developing and promote it there.
That’s what we are planning to do. So far you can enjoy it here:
{Click to enlarge}
<a href="http://www.seosmarty.com/how-myblogguest-has-been-growing-infographic/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.seosmarty.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/myblogguest-growth-02.jpg" width="600" height="316" alt="MyBlogguest Growth Infographic"></a>
<a href="http://www.seosmarty.com/how-myblogguest-has-been-growing-infographic/" target="_blank"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7118/6975488950_95655f39c6_o.jpg" width="600" height="2490" alt="MyBlogGuest growth"></a>
See you on MyBlogGuest!
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Hey Ann…..Im a big fan and a Premium MGB member. The site has worked out well for me and I hope it keeps growing.
I just wish there was maybe a tool or rating system for blogs. I get offers from many blogs but few are worthy.
It seems there is alot of brand new sites being put up jut for the purpose of getting paid (adsense/text links).
So each offer I get, I have to take the time and research the site. Wish we could somehow rate the website then have some sort of requirement for those offering to publish.
Any how keep up the hard work!
Ann, I’m very new to all of this and I think what you do is fantastic as it helps so many of us find informative connections. Please forgive my ignorance, but how does a website like yours finance itself? I can see the importance of a forum platform allowing people to interface with like minded individuals etc, but you have an impressive team working with you… is it through subscription and advertising? Sorry to be direct!
@Thomas, thanks for your kind words! We do have an internal rating in place. It’s integrated in our search so that you can sort search results by “blog power” (which includes Google PR, SEOmoz’s Rank and number of pages indexed by Google). You can also see that number when you visit the user’s profile and scroll down to his sites.
@Zoe, I appreciate your kind words and support. We have no secrets here. Our PRO membership pays our bills!
very glad you posted this Ann, Thanks for the information and for the great site!
Interesting concept I will get over to My Guest Blogger and see if I can make use of it for my site
It was so amazing to see it broken down into an info graphic like this wow Ann nice job. It’s only been two years? I thought you were before the days of blog engage I guess I was wrong, we’ve been here now since 2007. Congrats Ann, I love going into your forums and posting my contests, I hope to see more interest but hey one or two comments is a start and together we can keep growing.
I’ve managed to meet a lot of bloggers from your network and I’m so thankful for you taking the time and putting it all together.
Thanks for the kind words, Brian
Funny that I came across this page today. I was just in the need of guest blogging services. Law of Attraction! Very nice infograph by the way. I will be adding one more to the USA column (or pie piece depending on how your looking at it)
Did South Africa move to Chile and not tell anyone?
11% accounts from India, that’s awesome!
Congratulations on the success of My Blog Guest. I’m very surprised to see that 200 articles are placed on sites daily, that’s huge because I’m assuming that it does not include the guest posts from forums.
I’ve been using My Blog Guest for a few weeks and have been having some great results from contacting people through the forum for guest posting opportunities. I’m now thinking about becoming a PRO member and the only thing that was making me think twice was the chance of my articles being picked up by good sites from the article gallery. The infographic seems to suggest that it might not be a problem so that is reassuring.
Congratulation for the success of the My Blog Post. Thanks for shearing this.
Congrats on your great achievement
Ann, congrats on the success of your MyBlogGuest project!
Some good pointers, thanks.
Thanks, too much information I receive from that sites
What a blog it is the fantastic piece of writing of the article. Thanks.