Guest posting is a powerful digital marketing strategy that can improve SEO, increase brand awareness, and increase traffic to your website. Since guest posting has so many benefits it makes sense that many people want to do it as part of their overall marketing plan. 

When we started Accessily we wanted to make guest posting as easy and accessible as possible, so that anyone can do it and see results! Then we expanded into new channels, like social media so that our users could use the same streamlined process for guest posting in order to get creator shoutouts and more! 

In order to make sure that Accessily is providing the best creator and guest post solution on the market, we decided to compare ourselves to the top guest post outreach services. 

What is DIY Guest Posting and Guest Post Outreach?

So, how does DIY guest posting work? Basically, in DIY guest post outreaching, you do all the work of guest post yourself from research to outreach to writing. This process is pretty in-depth and time-consuming.

First, you have to research websites in your niche or industry, with an audience that matches your target market. Then you need to evaluate whether those sites match your goals, by answering questions like:

Do they have a high enough domain authority? Do they have a high number of monthly visitors? Etc. 

Once you have found these sites the work has still just begun! Then you have to find the contact information of the right person who can decide about what is posted on the site and you have to email them, again and again, in hopes of maybe getting a response. 

If you do get a response then you need to negotiate the price and the content, which may or may not result in an agreement. But if all goes well at the end of this process you have a guest post on another website. You can also use this process for DIY press releases.

Accessily’s creator marketplace and outreach platforms both try to solve the problem of doing all of this yourself. However, outreach services only solve the first step in the process part of the problem.

Accessily Overview

Before we look into the pros and cons of specific outreach services, let’s take a look at Accessily! 

Accessily is a creator marketplace where 15,000+ sellers list guest post opportunities and social media shoutouts in a variety of niches, industries, and languages.

You can either buy guest posts directly from the marketplace or automate the process by setting up a campaign according to your preferences.

Accessily streamlines the process of guest posting because it connects you to websites and online publishers that are ready to sell which cuts out all of the outreach and negotiation phases! This is much more time-efficient than guest post outreach.

Newest Feature: Accessily Social Channels 

Accessily has social channel posts on Instagram, Tik Tok and Quora. To order these posts you simply scroll to the bottom of the creator marketplace page to the Social Channel section.

Here you can select the social channel that you want to get a shout-out or guest post on. When you click on the channel you can see all of the creators on those channels that you can purchase from directly! No need for back and forth emails, these creators are ready to do business. 

Here you can see some of the Quora influencers that you can get guest posts from. You can click on the influencer for more information about them and for full price details. Talk about full transparency! If you want to read about the benefits of Quora guest posting you can read about it here. 

You can do the same for Instagram, let’s take a look.

You can search for Instagram influencers in the search bar and you can also sort them by follower count, rating, or price. 

When you click on the Instagram influencer you can see the number of followers, the number of posts, and the recent posts of the account. 

When you find one that you like you simply add it to the cart and checkout! No lengthy email outreach required.  

For an in-depth look at how to use the rest of the guest post marketplace and campaign functions, check out the last section of this blog post. 

Accessily Pros: 

• Ability to customize opportunities by niche or industry 
• Ability to filter by exact domain authority, traffic, language and more
• Ability to manage and track the content after purchase
• Full transparency in what you are purchasing 
• A Permanent high-quality backlink 
• Ability to buy social shout outs directly from creators on Instagram, Quora and Tik Tok 

Accessily Cons: 

Let us know! If you have any feedback on how we can improve our service please reach out. 

But right now we couldn’t think of any, the Accessily creator marketplace really seems like a win-win-win to us.

Now, Let’s Take a look at four Guest Post Outreach Platforms to see how they compare to Accessily:

Guest Post Outreach: Ninja Outreach 

Ninja Outreach is a guest post outreach platform for guest posts on social platforms, currently, they only offer the service on Instagram and Youtube. Ninja Outreach provides an outreach channel to creators of different sizes and niches but does not guarantee interaction or an ultimate shout-out/guest post deal. 

Let’s take a look at the process of using Ninja : 

When you reach the home page you can start by selecting whether you want to search for creators on Instagram or Youtube.

We entered “fashion” into the search bar to get started. The search results page featured top fashion-related Instagrams and shows the statistics of their engagement, average likes per post, and their number of followers. 

You can use the topic filters to refine your results. This bar includes beauty, fashion, fitness, clothes & accessories, lifestyle, and more.

If you click on the expand bar you can filter by any of the categories they have. This expands the search categories to a variety of niches from nature to tattoos. However, the list lacks many industry categories such as business, finance, news, health, etc. 

We clicked on Andressa Suita’s Instagram. 

Here we can see more analytics about her account than the preview, including the number of posts she has and the number of people she follows. There are also links to see the Media on her Instagram account, which shows her latest post and her best post in terms of engagement. 

On the right side corner, you have the option to send a single email to this creator or add the creator to an email campaign that you already have. At this point clicking on either option will prompt you to sign up for a paid account. 

You can choose between the Flex and Pro options, both of which have a very high monthly fee. The Flex fee is $299 per month and the Pro fee is $499 per month. The two plans are differentiated by the number of emails you are allowed to send, Flex has a limit of 10,000 per month and Pro has a limit of 15,000. 

Once you sign up for an account you have the ability to email any of the creators in the marketplace or add them to an automated email campaign of multiple reach outs.

This monthly price does not guarantee any of the creators will ultimately agree to a deal for a shout-out or guest post, or even a response at all. When that is taken into account the price seems pretty steep to us. 

Let’s review the Pros and Cons of Ninja Outreach

Guest Post Outreach: Ninja Outreach Pros and Cons 

Pros 

• Large Guest Post Outreach Database of Creators on Instagram and Youtube 
• Ability to email them when you sign up for a paid account 
• Option to filter options by categories 

Cons 

• No Guarantee of a Guest Post, Shout Out or Answer 
• Limited Industry Categories (No Business, Finance, News, etc.) 
• Only two social channels: Youtube and Instagram 
• No user reviews on creators

Ninja Outreach at first glance seems very promising with flashy Instagram accounts having millions of followers and high engagement highlighted at the top of their results pages. This seems like a gold mine for guest post outreach.

 However, it fails to put into context the thousands of emails influencers like that get daily and the extremely low likelihood of response. They don’t provide any measurement for the likelihood of response from emailing that address that they provide or any user reviews of reaching out to that creator. 

Ninja Outreach has a large database of emails and access to that database is their main asset. Overall they do not guarantee any return on investment for using their service because of the nature of email outreach. 

This process is not easy and it is usually slow, requiring hundreds of emails to even get a single reply. Then when you get a reply the negotiation begins and communications could fall through at any stage. In our opinion, this is not the most effective way to get a creator shout-out. 

Guest Post Outreach Review: BuzzStream 

Next Service on the chopping block is … BuzzStream.

BuzzStream is similar to NinjaOutreach, but with a focus on link-building guest post outreach rather than social media focused outreach. Buzzstream builds lists of websites to email and allows you to send a certain number of emails per month.  

In order to sign up for a Buzzstream account, you need to provide your credit card information, before you can preview the types of websites in their email database. This means you are paying for the guest post outreach before knowing who you can reach out to! You choose between one of four monthly outreach plans, each tier has more features. 

The prices range from $24 a month to $999 based on the number of contacts that you can email each month. The minimum number of emails you can reach out to is 1,000 and the maximum is 300,000. 

The additional features range from automated follow-up emails to different levels of support. 

However, none of the levels guarantee a certain number of backlinks or guest posts. The number of emails that you can send on Buzzstream is very high but also very hard to keep track of. They do offer reply tracking but this still seems like a lot of work to build links. You also have no idea what the quality is of all the websites you reach out to when you reach out in such high volumes, and there is no ability to preview the websites before signing up. The amount of work necessary to get a link using guest post outreach is just overwhelming.

Guest Post Outreach: BuzzStream Pros and Cons 

Pros 

• Allows you to reach a high number of new contacts 
• Allows you to track replies and clicks 
• Has email template options 

Cons 

• All contact information is behind a paywall 
• No preview of websites in their guest post outreach database
• No backlink or guest post guarantee with the purchase 

Guest Post Outreach Review: BuzzSumo 

Next on the list is BuzzSumo another popular guest post outreach website, let’s jump into the review: 

BuzzSumo is a guest post outreach website that focuses on influencer outreach and content research. BuzzSumo has a wide guest post outreach database of influencers on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. 

In order to use the website you first make an account with your email, business name, and business website. Then you can search for influencers by platform. 

Here you can enter keywords from your industry/niche and you can also add a location filter. We entered the word ‘fashion’ and the first result was ‘Who What Wear’ a Twitter account with 2 million followers. 

The search results provide data such as page authority, domain authority, follower number, and more. The problem is that BuzzSumo does not provide an email contact for these influencers; it simply links their accounts. This makes the tool practically useless for outreach because there is no way to connect with the influencers. 

Overall this tool can be used for research on prominent influencer in your niche but it won’t get you anywhere near an influencer shout-out or collaboration.  Basically, calling BuzzSumo an outreach option is a bit of a stretch. 

Guest Post Outreach: BuzzoSumo Pros and Cons 

Pros 

• Large guest post outreach database of influencers on multiple platforms 
• Ability to filter the search by keywords and location 

Cons 

• No email contact provided 
• No real options for connecting with the influencer 

Guest Post Outreach Review: SemRush 

Lastly let’s take a look at SemRush 

Semrush is designed to help improve SEO and has many different tools. The specific tool that relates to outreach is their link-building tool. This tool allows you to input your website and competitor websites and then it generates a pool of websites applicable for link-building outreach. 

This tool is behind a paywall and there is no preview option of the websites that you may be able to find. This seems to be a theme with the outreach sites! 

Once you do sign up you and pay for an account you can email websites that are potential backlink matches through Semrush and keep track of the results. 

The price for Semrush is either $119.95 per month or $299.95 per month depending on whether you choose the Pro or Guru option, both of which give you access to the link building tool. Although this price does include other tools, the link-building tool itself is pretty underwhelming. 

SemRush Link Building Tool Pros and Cons 

Pros 

• Access to a guest post outreach database of websites with email contact information 
• Ability to search based on your website and competitor websites 

Cons 

• Significant manual effort needed to use the tool (no email templates or automated follow-ups) 
• No guaranteed backlinks for the price 

Guest Post Outreach Takeaways: 

The guest post outreach sites we have looked at have an enormous lack of transparency. Guest Post Outreach companies often try to sell you the biggest package of emails possible without guaranteeing any actual results. You end up paying 10 times more than the actual cost of acquiring a backlink! In addition to the lack of transparency outreach companies also: 

• Don’t let you manage your guest post content
• Do not guarantee permanent backlinks 
• Require high monthly subscription fees 

Although Outreach companies may be easier than doing outreach by yourself, they are expensive and do not guarantee results. Why not skip outreach all together and connect with sellers who are ready to give you what you need without a million emails? If you want to generate guest posts, create powerful backlinks, or get creator shout-outs the easiest way is to use the Accessily Creator Marketplace.