So you’re a small company with little or no marketing budget.  What do you do?  Guest posting on well known blogs is one way to get your name, your product, or your service out there.

Recently, Patrick Bisaillon of Piggy Bank Pie ^[1] wrote a guest post for John Chow ^[2]; a major coup.  Originally, I had intended to interview Patrick for a follow up post here on how to contact bloggers, but his answers were too good to incorporate into a larger post.

As a result, I have chosen to publish his thoughts about his blog, his ideas for the future, and how he managed to get a guest spot on one of the biggest blogs around with his article: The Guest Bloggers Guide to the Blogosphere ^[3].

Please enjoy!

Lid: When did you start Piggy Bank Pie?

PB: I officially launched PiggyBankPie on Oct 1st 2007.

I’ve started working on the project around mid August, when I dropped out of the 30 Day Challenge ^[4].  Now I guess I need to explain why I quit the challenge. Well, for those who have been active in the 30DC forums last August, I was the leader of The Teamless Team, until I couldn’t connect to the Internet for 3 days because I moved out to a new house.

When I came back 3 days later, all members had vanished and I ended up being team less. So after that I continued listening to the 30DC podcasts, but I decided I would not go for the gold and I’d simply try to get the most out of the learning material.

I started reading blogs about 2 years ago. Then, I discovered JohnChow.com via an interview on a TV show in Canada called The Lab with Leo Laporte ^[5] (also broadcast in Australia.) I learned 3 things from this interview:

1. The Make Money Online niche
2. The existence of something called the blogosphere
3. The power of blogging.

For me blogs were great sites where I was reading tech reviews, I had no idea bloggers were blogging about… blogging!

So while I was dealing with the idea of starting my own blog, I was also trying to find a niche. I came really close to start a blog on HDTV and Home Theater.  But then came the 30 Day Challenge.

Lid: What are the original goals of Piggy Bank Pie and are you reaching them?

PB: My ultimate goal is to make enough money to pay guest bloggers publishing articles on PiggyBankPie. Am I reaching my goal? Slowly, yes.

In October there was not enough revenue to do such a thing.  But November was different, and I was able to purchase 1 article per writer who contributed since the beginning. How’s December going? Can’t wait to see, but you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed ^[6]for latest details on the story

Lid: Where would you like Piggy Bank Pie to be in one year?

PB: By being active as a guest blogger and expanding collaboration with other bloggers, I am hoping to enlarge my RSS subscribers and get better visibility. This should lead to increase in revenues for PiggyBankPie Writing Services ^[7] and therefore money to pay authors contributing to my blog.  If I have enough revenue in 1 year to purchase 2 articles per week, then I will be very happy.

Lid: Is this the first time you have guest posted at John Chow? 

The Guest Blogger’s Guide To The Blogosphere was my first guest post on John Chow dot Com, and there will be a next time

It was the second post I sent him and John refused my first one because it was about Making Money Online. I guess he wants to protect his site’s credibility and I agree with that. We all know he’s making lots of money online, so he’s the best person to blog about this topic.

Lid: What type of relationship did you have with him prior to this post?   E.g. commenting periodically for two months, subscriber for two years, uncle…

PB: He’s my father!

Just kidding.

I became a daily around May 2007. Then when I started the PiggyBankPie project, I thought it would be a good idea to launch an advertising campaign ^[8] at the same time that I would officially launch the blog.  So I contacted John by email and booked an RSS spot for $200. Basically, you get a note in the RSS feed saying  “This post was sponsored by PiggyBankPie…”  You may say it’s a lot of money, true, but it really helped me to get respectable traffic rapidly.

When you become an advertiser on a blogger’s site, I think you naturally open a channel that other bloggers don’t have access to.  Since then I emailed John a few times and always got a reply.

Lid: Can we include a portion of his reply?

PB: You know, John is quite a busy man (John Chow dot Com, The Tech Zone, TTZ Media), so his replies are often straight to the point:

Hi Patrick,

Thank you.  I will post this tomorrow.

John

Lid: Would you consider John Chow to be your mentor?

PB: I could say that, but my journey in the blogosphere came to a turning point when I met Maki ^[9] from Dosh Dosh ^[10]. Not long after I discovered John Chow dot Com I stumbled on Dosh Dosh and became a frequent reader.

Today I would say that both John Chow and Maki are great sources of inspiration for me.