Guest blogging is even more critical than writing on your own blog - the problem is, most sites won't feature you until you've established your own voice and writing style through an active blog of you own.

Once you've been writing for yourself for a few weeks, it's time to get some guest blogging exposure, this is how you should do that:

• Compile a list of the top 20 blogs you'd benefit for being featured as a guest blogger on.
• Contact some of your favorite writers on that site (not the editor or founder - they're too swamped).
• After a few weeks of observation, interaction with them on social sites and comments on their writing, send them a friendly email with some potential story ideas aligned to their interests and say you can send it right over if they are interested.
• Write the story after you receive a confirmation
• Once the story is published, comment, engage with other readers and the author
• Promote the story to your social networks and make sure to promote the writer who let you guest post of the site itself - build a relationship with them that you can later leverage for promotion
• Build at least 5 of these relationships