I also think it can be a valuable service. It’s very elitist to think most of us can just alert readers we’re going on vacation and looking for guest bloggers and think they’ll be falling all over themselves. Rae can, but most of us can’t.

Now I wouldn’t let anyone write for my blog. I do care a lot about it and am very protective of it, but I may not know enough people who I could directly ask to fill in for me. A service like Guest Blogger will help build relationships among bloggers so they can get to know each other.

I completely agree about paid commenting being a bad idea, though. That’s just spam waiting to happen.

I think you might be confusing the baby with the bath water. Any respectable blogger is going to read anything before posting it on their site. Any any guest blogger writing for free is going to want to write for a respectable blogger, not some spammy site, what would be in it for the author besides a bad rep?

I mean, anyone can write for their own spammy site if they really want to go there.

I see it more like a free temp agency for bloggers – where due diligence is required on both sides for it to work. But when it doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean the temp agency is the one in the wrong.

Just my $.02.

Granted, Rae did a fine job cloning herself with her guest bloggers. Subbing for me would be so boring it would make everyone cry, compared to her place.

Another thought is how well Mystery Guest did whenever she popped in at SEOMoz/blog. Her writing style is so incredible that she not only fit right in, but easily took the throne.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with guest blogging; it’s healthy, both for the blog and the blogger. What I’m not comfortable with is the idea of opening my blog up to someone that I don’t know or have some kind of connection with. A blog is personal and your readers form an attachment to you. To let someone come in that you can’t vouch for me, to me, that’s problematic. The blogosphere is filled with people looking to get noticed. If you’re looking for guest bloggers, ask from within your community, frequent commenters, other bloggers that you have relationships with and who know what you and your blog are about.

The other issue I have with Guest-Blogger is that I fear less than respectable “bloggers” will ultimately take advantage of it and use it to feed their MFA sites. And when that happens everyone loses.

Again, my apologies if I came off strongly in my post. I didn’t mean to totally lump you in with the spammy Buy Blog Comments site and that’s probably how it came off.