[Please see the new 2014 versions of MyBlogGuest growth report here]
These have been fun and crazy two years (actually 2 years and a few months). My Blog Guest, my first huge project, has been growing steadily and at some point I thought we were lucky that that was not a sudden huge growth. The way (and the rate) we were developing was a blessing for us because we had time to solve issues we came across on the way.
The hardest part about MyBlogGuest was that we were the first. Our platform is unique in many ways. The tools we have been developing are completely ours. We had no examples to follow, no competitors to beat and no one whose experience we had to learn from.
That’s the main reason I’ve enjoyed the ride. And I still love every day of running the site: lots of invaluable experience daily.
MyBlogGuest has NOT been built to earn money. We started as the forum with no monetization plan behind it. All I wanted was to build contacts with bloggers and learn from that.
The way we’ve been running it has always been the same: we have been listening to every single word our members are saying. We are following their recommendations and feature suggestions. And we are working hard every day to make it a better tool for everyone who is using it.
We have our strong and weak points. I am a control freak who is always seeking to make a perfect product – this is why we have never stopped working: MyBlogGuest is always the work in progress.
When I started MyBlogGuest, I had no idea it would once become my priority. It was a hobby. And because I enjoyed running it so much, it quickly grew into something bigger.
Table of Contents
The Team
Today we are lucky have a great team of people working on MyBlogGuest:
Michael is the head of our development team. He is my brother and the person who has been running MyBlogGuest from day 1. He is the one who implements all our users’ feature suggestions. Without him, there would be no MyBlogGuest.
Sana is our awesome administrator. She manages customer support, helps new-comers and answers all questions. Sana is my right hand and we need a separate post to describe all she is doing for us and how much we love her for that!
Phil is our Gallery mod.
He keeps an eye on the quality of all the content being posted there.
Louis is also our moderator as well as one of the oldest members of MyBlogGuest.
I’ve known him for ages!
Deborah is our community building strategist. She moderates our Twitter chats, promotes our users’ guest posts and managers our social media accounts.
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And lastly, Ann, who you probably know since you are reading this blog now. I do the rest of less important stuff. 🙂
We have not built a perfect platform (yet) but we take pride in our customer support and community building efforts!
MyBlogGuest Freebies
My philosophy has always been the same: MyBlogGuest will always be 100% usable for free. We started as a free platform. None of the initially free features has been made paid since then.
Thus we have a few great free tools and resources which will always remain free:
The Forum
When we started, I had no idea where we were heading. So the simple forum interface made perfect sense then. We have then tweaked it a bit to improve structure. Everyone joining MyBlogGuest can build contacts using the forum, send PM, use “follow up” reminders, etc.
Sana is also browsing the forums daily to make sure everyone gets help. She also collects the best offers from it into one great “Featured Offers” thread which you can subscribe to be updated of most recent and most powerful opportunities.
For more insight into our features, see how our members are using MyBlogGuest: Here’s our official Youtube Playlist for our users’ video reviews and tutorials. So play all of them to discover *your* favorite free feature.
The Free Resources
Since guest blogging is such a widely misunderstood tactic, we have done our best to promote our own way to use it. The way we firmly believe in. The best ways to access that information are:
- Join our Twitter chats weekly: each Thursday 11 a.m. EDT / 3 p.m. GMT
- Download our free formatting checklist
- Download our guest blogging eBook
The Past and the Future
That’s been a fun ride and we are not planning to stop. We will definitely keep coming up with new features and options. Stay tuned!
When we launched our Infographics Gallery, one of our very smart users suggested that we should create the infographic on how MyBlogGuest has been developing and promote it there.
That’s what we are planning to do. So far you can enjoy it here:
{Click to enlarge}
<a href="http://www.seosmarty.com/how-myblogguest-has-been-growing-infographic/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.seosmarty.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/myblogguest-growth-02.jpg" width="600" height="316" alt="MyBlogguest Growth Infographic"></a>
<a href="http://www.seosmarty.com/how-myblogguest-has-been-growing-infographic/" target="_blank"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7118/6975488950_95655f39c6_o.jpg" width="600" height="2490" alt="MyBlogGuest growth"></a>
See you on MyBlogGuest!
