guest article 04/and a little extra
The onderhond blog has been running for a good 2.5 years now. There's been ups, downs and many in-betweens. I've learned a lot from the time spent on writing the near-400 articles already present on this blog, but with all the time going into fine-tuning these articles you start to demand something in return. Now, before you think this is my goodbye note, no need to worry. There's only happy stuff in here.
Blogging for fame is a pretty horrible starting point, that said it certainly helps if what you write has a certain impact on the people you write for. You can't write 2 years straight without getting any feedback or without straying outside of the boundaries of your own blog. Going places gives a serious boost to your motivation so it's good to stay on the lookout for opportunities. On a personal level I achieved that by joining the Twitch team, on a professional level I seek for guest posts once in a while.
hunted
First things first though. Looking for guest post opportunities is one thing, people picking up and publishing your stuff is even more fun. That way you don't have to do anything and you still get to reach new audiences. When I checked my site stats last month I noticed a serious bump in Japanese traffic coming to my site. On further exploration it turned out the article on 1px rounded corners made it in the June issue of Web Designing, a Japanese (printed) magazine.
They were nice enough to send me a couple of issues. Not that I understood any of it, but how cool is that, holding a Japanese magazine with a reference to one of your own articles. From what I could read it did look pretty informative though. Shame they don't have an English translation out.
serious stuff
Sometimes it takes a little more effort, which isn't all that bad as long as you have something to show for it. A good two months ago I solicited to write a guest article for Smashing Magazine, one of the leading web design blogs out there. It ended up as one mean beast of an article, but the result is something I'm quite proud of.
The article is about semantic consistency and the lack thereof in most sites. Not only big corporate sites that have other things to worry about, but also blogs from the leading web design bloggers seem to suffer from semantic inconsistency. Quite strange, as it's not all that difficult to implement. The article gives you a little sample of content type implementation around the web and some pointers on how to make your own code more consistent.
Find it here: When One Word Is More Meaningful Than A Thousand
predictions for the future
Well, that's a simple one. I just take what comes along. Whenever I feel the need to write something I believe deserves a bigger audience than my little blog can guarantee I'm sure I'll be able to land the article some place or another. And when that happens, you'll read about it here.
Comments
Mathias Bynens
I congratulate you on your Smashing Magazine article. It’s quite an accomplishment to get your stuff posted there. Well done!
However, I disagree with the following statement:
Everything you or anyone else write deserves the biggest audience it can get. The quality of an article is not related to the number of subscribers to the site it’s posted on.
Niels, just keep writing whatever you want, wherever you want. People will read it because it’s interesting to them. You’re doing great!
Niels Matthijs
True, but it's hard to ignore the cold facts. If I had posted the SmashingMag article on this blog it could've reached maybe a 1000 people, if I got lucky that is. Probably less, as is always the case with articles I think are the most interesting ones.
You know that when you write for Smashing Magazine you'll be reaching a huge mass of people that you wouldn't have reached otherwise, no matter how good the articles you write.
I don't mind writing for smaller audiences and I'm happy with the visitor stats of my blog, but whenever I feel a certain topic deserves some extra attention and depth I prefer to publish at established blogs ensuring me a more substantial audience. Only then can you make a little dent in the collective consciousness of your readers or the community as a whole :)