I've received an offer for a sponsored guest post on my blog. How do I know if it's worth it?

Updated: June 20, 2018

This is a BBC Community Newsletter Slack Question of the Week. The answer is taken directly from Slack.

Scrivs: @Tara I get these daily. They want the google juice so essentially paying you $X for a link that stays on your site

Tara: @Scrivs I take it you don't take them up on the offer then? Presumably google could pick up on this tactic somehow and penalize both parties?

Scrivs: Why would I? I bust my ass to get my blogs growing and become authorities and a person comes along, pays $XX for a link and that link stays there for life? So I continue to grow the blog, make it more valuable, and that link proves more and more valuable to the company. I just sold real estate for a penny in the middle of Time Square

But if you need money that's a different story. If y'all wanna sell space on your blogs to me I'll pay those rates

Tara: But what would you do if your blog wasn't growing?!

I do take your point though!

Scrivs: Write content that would make it grow? Not trying to sound like an asshole with that answer but nothing changes with my strategy no matter what the situation is with my blog

Getting $20 guest posts isn't going to make it grow

But I'd also ask is the only metric that I use for growing my blog pageviews? If that's the case then I'd better be in a niche that gives monster pageviews.

If the metric is how much money the blog makes then I look at how do I make money with my current audience?

I wouldn't do it, I can understand completely why others do it, easy money But if my goal is to create strong brands over time then I know my writing is what is going to create that brand. If people come across another post that doesn't really fit my brand (because someone else wrote it) then it hurts me more than helps. But everyone has a price, give me $2,000+ for a guest post and a link then it makes sense for me to consider