Guest posting is an important aspect of article marketing, and is a great way to build inbound links and to attract new traffic to your website or blog. But, should you have to pay to put a guest post? If so, how much?
I ask because I wanted to have a guest post published on a blog for personal purposes. It wasn't a sponsored post. It was merely something I wrote to have published on a site other than my own. When I submitted this guest post, the blog owner not only agreed to publish it, but wanted $150 for it since it included a link in the text. This link wasn't a backlink, but merely a way to cite a statistic that I used in the article. I thought the price was outrageous since it wasn't a sponsored post, and that the blog has a separate form for sponsored posts and guests posts (neither of which mention any price on the page, mind you). I asked the blog owner if the fee would be waived if I removed the link. I also clarified that the link is there as a citation, not to build an inbound link for a company. I never got a response.
I definitely think that sponsored posts should be paid for, since they are slanted to favor a particular standpoint or company product. They should also be paid for because they would include additional inbound links beyond what's in the byline. Guest posts, however, shouldn't be paid for, especially if the only inbound link will be in the byline. If it was the norm for guest posts to be paid for, then it wouldn't be touted as an excellent way to do inbound marketing. Granted, inbound marketing isn't for free, but no business would want to engage in something that had to be paid for twice. I just can't see how this $150 fee is somehow industry standard in blogging or in inbound marketing.
What do you think? Should you have to pay a blog to publish your guest post just like you would a sponsored post? If so, is $150 too much, too little, or just right?