The next step is to validate each of your 10 candidates.

We know that your perfect subscriber hangs out on these blogs and that each site accepts guest contributions.

However, what we don’t know is if this site will produce enough email subscribers for you to justify the time you spend to create a new original piece of content for them.

To do that, you’ll need to do a site audit for each blog.

There are three points you need to examine for each blog.

Checkpoint #1: Is the audience active and engaged?

One of the easiest ways to measure engagement is through blog comments.

If a blog averages less than 5 comments per post, it’s usually not worth the effort to write for them.

If it averages 10 or more, that is a solid indication that their audience is active.

Another prime indicator of the blog's engagement level is the number of social shares that their posts receive.

Less than 50 shares is usually a bad sign. More than 200 can be a really good indicator of engagement.

Checkpoint #2: Have past guest contributors gotten good results?

Ask past contributors what type of results they have seen.

To do that, simply email any past writers for the blog you want to post on with this template…

Subject: your article on SITENAME

Body:

I just read your article on SITENAME.

Great job!

Especially the part about [insert article specific takeaway].

Quick question…

I am a writer as well and I wanted to approach SITENAME about an article on ARTICLE-TOPIC.

Have you experienced good traffic spikes back to your website when you publish articles for SITENAME?

Thanks for your time and keep up the good work!

-YOURNAME