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I sent outreach emails to over 100+ Gaming blogs
Posted by on February 16, 2026 at 7:08 pmALL emails had
- Personalized to the website/editor
- A blog link on their website that shows them they already link to one or more of my competitors
- 2-3 Ideas for a guest post I would write for free
- Link to my recent blogs to show the quality
So far all the responses I have gotten are
- Asking for money + linking me a bunch of other websites with price tags.
I guess I shouldn't have expected any different, what a waste of time.
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1 Reply
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[removed]
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Idk about anyone else, but I don’t even read emails like this anymore. I get anywhere from 5-10 a day, and most of those follow up another 3-5 times, so it’s an endless barrage of annoyance.
I understand why people send them and I do help other website owners when I can, but I just don’t have the time to sift through a gazillion emails on the off chance there’s one that’s a good fit for my site. Not to mention that I’ve put so much work into my site over 17 years that I almost never trust anyone that I haven’t built some type of online relationship with.
All that to say that at least from a website owners perspective, I don’t think this type of outreach works anymore.
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If you are a blogger honestly looking to write guest posts for other bloggers that don’t have a commercial link in them you need to grow a community.
I guest posts from bloggers and have accepted many over the year’s but not one of those has ever come from a random cold email.
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Are you taking advice from SEObook?
Big players have their own blog network.
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Join link exchange subreddits. Do yourself a favor and don’t worry about DA or DR and build relationships
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I’ve found sending outreach to random people to be quite a waste of time as well.
Look for people that actually have interest in exchanging links. Backlink exchange subreddit is good.
You’ll still waste time with people who aren’t willing to actually put in any effort. But much less.
I have a gaming/movies/TV blog thats still in its infancy, but I’d be willing to talk exchanges. DM me if you have any interest.
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If you want to pitch a story, most publications of specific instructions for that. If you don’t follow those instructions, you are better off screaming into the wind.
If you want just trying to get links they are q definitely going to ignore you.
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yeah cold outreach like this will be mainly pay to play
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Not that you should, but there are quite a few tools out there that would help you send thousands or tens of thousands of these emails. Maybe not personalized with the link to their own website, but you could do the other stuff. Thing is, because of those types of tools, we are all so overwhelmed with those type of spam emails that we all just ignore them now. The first thing I do when working each day is delete all those emails. It’s usually dozens each day. I don’t even read them.
You either need to form real relationships with these people like in comment sections, on social media, or maybe at gaming conventions or other events, or just pay for the links. There are other places to get links too.
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It’s not always that there are no free lunches…There are just very FEW.
From what I have understood you are offering 2-3 GP on their blog in exchange to link to one of your pages on your domain. Your competitors paid for placement.
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No one with a site of any value will ever do this. I don’t even bother replying to these and I get them every day, straight in the bin. The advice is from 10 years ago and even back then most people wouldn’t accept a free guest post containing a commercial link.
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No one is accepting guest posts just to add one more article to their website. Unless it’s an absolute banger, something unique that took actual effort. Not some “well written content” that took you an afternoon to write.
Otherwise you either need to pay or you need to be well known in your industry. Otherwise it’s just not worth the hassle for bloggers to deal with your guest post in most cases. This varies by niche of course.
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Yeah I have been an editor for sites that do this and never ever got a piece from a freelancer that was even close to publish ready. They know you’re doing it to boost your SEO, insisting on pay to play is their way of not going in the hole on your behalf.
Unless you’re well known in your niche or otherwise trustworthy, you’ll rarely find free guest posting anymore.
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