How to get free, high-quality content on your blog [10 Proven To Work Methods]

If you want to have many visitors on your blog, there are several things that you need to take care of. One of those things is to add great content regularly. Today I’m going to show you how to get that content for free.

And when I say GREAT, I mean that type of content people would love to read and share with their friends or colleagues.

However, I know there are days when you don’t have enough time to research and write quality posts on your blog. So read on to find out some methods to get free and high-quality content for your blog that you can implement immediately.

10 Methods to get free content for your blog

In this article, I’m going to share with you 10 methods to get free content written by others for your blog.

Of course, we are talking about quality content that will benefit both your readers and search engines.

I describe each method in detail, so you can easily replicate it and apply it on your blog, no matter the niche you’re in.

1. Invite content marketers to guest post on your blog

We put into practice this method in 2019 and polished it in 2020 and 2021 to get high-quality and well-researched content on our digital affiliate marketing magazine.

Instead of creating a write for us page (which we deleted in Feb 2020), we outreached to content creators and marketers hired by companies in our niche (Growth Marketing, Content, SEO, Social Media and E-commerce, Agencies).

Most probably, the companies in your industry already have a blog where their folks regularly post content for their audience. They can do this because they have a content department or an agency they work with.

So make a list with the companies in your niche and invite them to write well-researched content for your blog, and in exchange, they will get free press, traffic, and a backlink. You can start with our list of 500+ websites that accept guest posts.

2. Allow guest posting on your blog

There aren’t many bloggers that don’t know about guest posting, as this is one of the most popular methods for bloggers to get content and get backlinks on other blogs.

That’s why I will not insist too much on it but give you, briefly, some tips that will increase the chances to get better content:

2.1 Check your DA score

The vast majority of bloggers do guest posts to get quality links to their websites. That’s why it is crucial to have good rankings. Domain Authority by Moz is the most used ranking factor by bloggers.

Websites with higher DA (40+) get around 50-60 requests every month, so you will have plenty of guest posts to choose from. You can check your Domain Authority(DA) and Page Authority(PA) ranks on Moz Open Site Explorer.

As you can see, our DA is only 33 at the moment, as we don’t focus much on building links. That’s why we get around 15-20 requests per month. If you want to increase your DA, you should focus on building quality backlinks to your blog.

2.2 Create a “Write for us” page

To get guest posting requests is crucial to let your visitors know you accept them. That’s why you need to have a Write for us/ Contributors page on your blog.

The Write for us page should be concise and briefly explain that you accept guest posts and the writing guidelines writers should follow.

2.3 Outreach bloggers in your niche

If you want to take one step further, you may contact writers that already guest posted on other blogs. Check several blogs from your niche and look for their contributors’ page.

There you see listed all contributors with their social media profiles and their sites, so you can easily contact and invite them to write for your blog.

2.4 Publish the article

When you receive an article, make sure it complies with your publishing rules and fits your audience. If it does, publish it or send the feedback to the blogger to make the necessary changes.

Don’t forget to assign the article to a contributor account and promote it on your social media accounts. Some authors will like to publish on more sites, so let them know about this if you have more blogs.

3. Organize an expert roundup

An expert roundup post is a blog post that features contributions by multiple experts in your niche. Typically, as the host blogger, you will provide an interesting topic for discussion or a question and then reach various experts to share their opinion.

We organized an expert roundup here on Monetize.info in January and got 3519 highly targeted visitors, around 300 new Twitter followers, 500 social media shares, 20 email subscribers, and 14 new backlinks. This is the result for the first 30 days after the roundup was published. Check the expert roundup here.

You can easily replicate it whatever your niche is: finance, blogging, internet marketing, dating, you name it.

We’ve created a detailed guide on how to create an expert roundup. Follow the guide, and you will have a great expert roundup post on your blog that your readers will love to read and share with their friends.

4. Host interviews on your blog

Besides expert roundups, another way to get in touch with experts and persons with authority in your niche is to interview them on your blog.

Interviewing people is the easiest, fastest, cheapest, most versatile, and reliable way to get content that I have ever found.

Consider two universal truths:

1. everyone in the world wants to feel special and be recognized/honored as a thought leader in an area they care about
2. everyone in the world cares about helping themselves out.

Asking someone to interview them plays off both truths beautifully to motivate a person to become a willing and excited participant. Over many years, the only reason anyone has ever turned me down (which has been very rarely) was because they were too busy to take part.

You may interview entrepreneurs, influencers, bloggers, or experts in your niche. There are several things you need to do to get an interview with these people.

4.1 Email Outreach template for interviews

Here is the template I use to contact them and ask them for an interview:

After you receive a positive response, create a list of 10-12 questions about the person you interview and send them. Give a timeframe of 2-3 weeks for them to answer. Before the deadline is closed, you may send another email reminding them to answer the interview questions.

Another way is to schedule a Skype call or text. However, I found this quite difficult because most of the people I interview have quite a busy schedule. However, it may work for you and your niche.

5. Enrich your old blog posts.

I think you already use this technique by updating your old posts with fresh content, but today we will take this a little bit further, and we will ask others to add their input on your post and update it. Contact influential people and ask for their opinion on your post.

For instance, let’s take this post written in October 2016 – 15 Twitter Automation Tools. I would send a message to people that I know they use Twitter and ask them what tools are they using. You may rephrase the template below:

You should contact at least 10-15 persons to get several responses to add to the post and re-publish it when it is updated. Don’t forget to contact everyone mentioned in the article as they will share it with their audience.

6. Use HelpAReporterOut (HARO)

HARO is a free service that provides journalists with a robust database of upcoming stories and daily opportunities for sources to secure valuable media coverage.

If you apply as a journalist, you will get content written by other bloggers and writers in exchange for coverage (and a backlink 🙂 ) on your magazine or blog.

6.1 HARO Rules

There are several rules you need to follow. The first two of them are that your Alexa rank should be below one million, and your website needs to be fully launched at least one month before submitting a request:

1. To use HARO as a journalist, your or your media outlet’s website must have an Alexa.com ranking of one million or less. To determine your website’s Alexa ranking, please visit http://www.alexa.com/topsites and enter your website in the search box. Online television and radio shows must be hosted by their own domain that also meets our Alexa ranking criteria. Your website will be judged based on the overall Alexa traffic rank, not the traffic rank in the U.S.
2. Your publication or website must be fully launched for at least a month before submitting a source request. Ensure that your site meets our Alexa.com criteria before a request may be submitted on behalf of a newly launched website.

Check all HARO rules for journalists here.

6.2 HARO Signup process

All you have to do is to signup here, fill in your profile details and add a query. After that, you will be contacted with pitches from bloggers that want to contribute to your article. You can use this technique to look for successful bloggers that you can interview on your site.

Bellow, you will see the query I’ve added to the site. On this one, I’ve received 12 pitches from bloggers that want to contribute to the article. If you have a website with better rankings/exposure, you will receive way more. I’ve seen requests with almost 100 pitches.

7. Encourage comments on your post

Encourage your readers to debate and post their inputs on your posts. If you don’t have time to add new content, make sure you keep the posts you already created updated by letting users comment and interact with each other.

If you check popular bloggers, you will see that their posts get over 100 comments and the overall content of these comments is way longer than the article. Also, if you scroll between the comments, you will get valuable questions and ideas.

There are several things you have to do to keep the discussion going:

• At the end of your blog post, make a strong call to action by asking your readers to add their opinions on your work or to ask questions if they have any.
• Install this great plugin: Subscribe to comments reloaded so all the members that commented will receive an email message when a new comment is added, encouraging discussions.
• When a comment is added to your site, approve it and answer it as fast as possible. No one likes to comment and then wait for many hours or even days to see it live.
• Create the feeling of a community around your blog, encouraging users to interact. You may add a forum or a Facebook group so your readers will interact and know each other.

8. Create a collection list post

Another way to write a blog post quickly but still be appreciated and shared with their friends by your readers is to create a list post. All you have to do is to create a list of posts from other blogs.

With so much content written daily on the internet and so many new websites that appear online is quite difficult for readers that don’t have too much time to get quality information. That’s where you come in the picture and create curated list posts.

Examples of posts you can write on your blog:

• Last week news from your niche,
• Top X posts In your niche,
• X Books you should read etc.

For this article, I will create an example post using news from the SEO industry news. We are a digital marketing magazine, and we focus on SEO and Social Media.

These are several blogs from the SEO industry we follow: Search Engine Journal, SEORoundTable.com, Social Media Examiner, Link-Assistant Blog, SearchEngineLand.com

8.1 List Post Example

Add 5-10 articles with excerpts, and there you have it – a brand new post on your blog.

You can use this method not only when you’re in a hurry to post something on your blog. You may transform it into a weekly or bi-weekly post, for instance, on Friday, and also send a newsletter to all your subscribers. Call it: Friday Industry Blog Roundup or something.

9. Ask companies to write about their newly released report

In most industries, companies release at every several months a research paper, a report, or a whitepaper which they are eager to let the world know about.

If you signup for their newsletter, you will know about them 1st. Each report comes with a press release and a summary that outlines the key findings of the report.

These press releases are free to post, but they will soon become duplicate content.  That’s why you should ask their marketing department to make slight changes to the article, and in exchange, you will publish it for free and inform your audience. You may be surprised to find out that they will do it and send you a unique piece of content.

Here is an email I received days ago about the release of such a report:

So get in touch with businesses from your industry, and you will get more free content for your blog.

10. Republish other people’s articles.

I know that you heard that duplicate content would hurt your rankings, so you’re afraid to post articles from other sites. But if you don’t do it too often and have the author’s permission, you will be fine. In fact, he will be happy to share his piece of work with your audience, and your readers will be happy to read a new piece of content.

Still, you can ask the author to change the article to match your audience better slightly, and most probably, he will happily do it. Let’s say that one of your peers wrote a great article about 10 SEO Tricks that Can Boost Your Blog Rankings. You can ask the writer to change it a little bit and transform it into an article focusing on your audience: 10 SEO Tricks That Will Boost Your Affiliate Website Rankings.

The article’s core information is the same but is adapted for your audience and their specific needs.

Conclusion

There you have it: 10 methods you can use to get free content written by others for your blog. I’ve used all these methods here on Monetize.info and other blogs, and I got excellent results.

I’m sure there are also other methods you can use to get content so let us know: What methods you use to get quality content on your blog. If you have questions, feel free to ask. I’m thrilled to help and interact with other bloggers.