I’ve recently been contacting other bloggers who have green or eco blogs, and I’ve found a couple things that really bug me. Firstly, only 25% responded to my email. And of the blogs I contacted, about 40% didn’t have any way of getting in touch with the blog owner, except via a comment!

With the poor response rate, I can understand that I wouldn’t get a 100% response. For example, contact messages may get filtered by spam catchers or perhaps the blogger doesn’t check their email very often. However, I was offering to write an article for free for these bloggers in return for a backlink (i.e. guest blogging). However, rather than get a “thanks, but no thanks”, I just get nothing! I was also offering a free backlink to their site from Daily Eco Tips if they were willing to write a tip for it. But still, only a 25% reply rate.

I did get 1 person saying that what I was offering didn’t meet their audience, which I can understand. Of those who did reply and who wanted my guest post, I had a very enthusiastic response. However, I made the effort to write a post targeted at the site I was interested in, and made every attempt to highlight what they get from my offer. I certainly do what I can to reply to all emails I receive.

Some other things that I have discovered when looking for other green bloggers:

  • Bloggers can be overly harsh when moderating comments
  • Blog commenters are really lazy, and too commonly leave “I agree” type comments
  • Bloggers don’t often have an archive for old posts (Tip #9), which means you can’t determine the blog age or find other interesting articles.
  • Bloggers get fed up quickly and easily, and lose momentum when updating their blog.
  • Bloggers don’t provide an email address or contact form to allow readers to get in touch.

The last point is a big mistake. If your readers can’t contact you, you’re missing out on valuable feedback, new ideas, interesting link exchanges, potentially guest writers, new advertising systems, free products, and more!