• Foot traffic provides a strong indication of future home sales.  SentriLock, LLC. provides NAR Research with monthly data on the number of showings.
• Year-over-year foot traffic levels grew steadily over the last 5 months in the area covered by the Jefferson City Area Board of REALTORS® (Missouri).
• Foot traffic rose 64% in February of this year relative to February of last year, but that gap eased back to 23% in April.
• Steady employment growth and record affordability have peaked interest in housing, but new, higher fees at the FHA and tight private lending remain headwinds for the market.

This guest post is by Alexis Grant of AlexisGrant.com.

You know all the benefits of guest posting on popular blogs. And you’ve decided to start guest posting today. So you want to do your best to crank out awesome content.

But smart ideas are only half the battle. The difference between pitching a thought-provoking post and pitching a thought-provoking post that gets accepted is making it easy for your editor to say “yes.” In other words, go beyond providing awesome, unique content and make accepting your post a no-brainer.

As editor of Brazen Life, I see aspiring contributors make the same mistakes again and again—mistakes that make me groan and delete. Here’s what you’ve got to remember: the editor you’re pitching is a person with a job to do, just like you. And the easier you make their job, the more likely they are to publish your post.

Here are five steps you can take that will make it easy for editors to say “yes” to your guest posts.

1. Write in the “you” voice, not the “I” voice

Readers want to feel like you’re talking to them, offering helpful advice and ideas—not like you’re talking about yourself. While the occasional anecdote can be effective, your best bet is to start out your post by talking to the reader, and writing about how what you’re about to share will change their life. Then delve into your personal anecdote.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Writing in the “I” voice might turn out a post that begins like this:

“I’ve always had trouble paying back my student loans.”

Writing in the “you” voice would look more like this:

“Having trouble paying back your student loans?”

The “you” there is only implied—“[Are you] having trouble paying back your student loans?”—but it’s still there. Here’s another option:

“Lots of students are having trouble paying back student loans. If you fall into this camp, listen up.”

That’s not the catchiest intro, but you get the idea—it’s written with “you”s rather than “I”s. This concept is essential throughout your piece, but most important in your introduction.

2. Don’t bury the lede

The biggest problem I see with guest posts is that they fail to have a focused introduction that tells the reader what they’re about to get—and tells them right away. In journalism, we call this “burying the lede.”

You only have a few seconds to catch and keep the attention of your reader. That means you can’t spend two paragraphs getting to the meat of your idea. Instead, you’ve got to get a running start, at least hinting at your main point from the very beginning.

If you’re having a hard time with this, see what happens if you chop off the first graph or two. Is it possible the piece would actually be stronger if you started with the second or third paragraph?

Even writers who offer fabulous ideas throughout their piece often have a weak introduction. Give your first few paragraphs extra care; they’ll make or break your post. And your editor will be particularly happy if s/he doesn’t have to rewrite your intro.

3. Write a great headline—even if you don’t have to

You may not be required to write a headline for your post, but guess what? It makes your editor’s job easier. The headline can be the hardest part; it’s got to be catchy, relevant and SEO-optimized. And it should match the voice of the other headlines on the site.

That means it will probably take some time to come up with a good one. But rather than completing your post and pitching it straight away, consider the extra effort it takes to create a fabulous headline part of the assignment.

There’s an added bonus here, too: if your headline is great, more readers will read, share and comment on your post. You’ll get more clicks on the link in your byline and more return for your investment. If you leave the headline up to the editor, there’s a chance they’ll come up with one that will serve you well, but if you take the time to do it yourself, you know you’ve done all you can to maximize eyes on the post.

Of course, it’s always the editor’s prerogative to change the headline, but that shouldn’t keep you from giving it your best shot. And take it from me—your editor will appreciate it!

4. Follow the publication’s link policy from the get-go

Each publication has its own policy about including links within the post¸ So either look for those requirements within the publication’s guest post guidelines, or ask the editor ahead of time.

At Brazen Life, we love to see links within the post so long as they’re relevant and helpful to our readers; in fact, we don’t run posts without links. But some publications have different preferences, often asking, for example, that the writer not link to his or her own blog. Getting this right the first time will make your editor’s day that much easier.

5. When in doubt, create a list

Having trouble getting your ideas across succinctly? Lots of us do, and lists can be a great help with that.

Here’s the good news: lists are popular with readers, too. Most posts with “5 Tips” or “5 Pieces of Advice” or “5 Reasons” get lots of clicks, which means if you’re good at writing list posts, you should do it.

I hate to advise this initially, because it’s so refreshing when a writer offers an awesome post that’s not written as a list or in bullet format. But bullets do make posts easy to read online. And if you’re struggling to write a helpful post, bullets can make it easier for you to convey your main ideas.

Following these tips—and making your editor’s job easy—won’t just help you land one guest post. If you abide by these suggestions, write a clean post and offer thought-provoking content, they’ll want you to write for them again down the line. And that means lots more guest posts in your future.

Do you have any tips you can add to this list? We’d love to hear them in the comments. And if you’re looking for other ways to use guest posts to attract new readers, stick around—later today, we’ll see how accepting guest posts on your blog can boost your traffic levels.

Alexis Grant is managing editor of Brazen Careerist’s blog, Brazen Life.

The burgeoning foreclosures-to-rental business could become a $100 billion industry as increasingly sizable investors infiltrate hard-hit markets from Florida to California to Arizona to the Midwest.

Signs are pointing to a housing recovery, as stated by numerous news and government authorities. Some markets have picked up so much, that competition is forcing buyers to set themselves apart.

Internet access via a PC will cease for many due to a new Windows virus. Hackers recently discovered a Windows vulnerability, and seized the opportunity to infect over half a million PCs with their new virus. The FBI, in conjunction with a partner, set up a site to check your machine for infection and get a fix.

In these tough times a little bit of business etiquette can go a long way in making you stand out from the rabble. Time shares 5 rules to help refine your sense of propriety and decorum.

Before you pull out the mop and bottles of cleaning solution for your annual Spring cleaning, you might want to check the labels. Time reports that several popular brands contain toxic ingredients.

Man has domesticated and mutated dogs for centuries to suit our needs and whims, but an article in American Scientist reveals some scientists belief that dogs cause humans to evolve too. Humans are the only ape species to have a white part of the eye around the pupil as a default–perhaps a competitive advantage for early dog owning humans by allowing dogs to more quickly follow an owner’s gaze to help hunt prey.

March foreclosure starts increased a modest 8.1 percent in March over February while foreclosure sales continued to behave somewhat erratically, dropping to their lowest level since December 2010, and most sharply in non-judicial states

The March Mortgage Monitor report released by Lender Processing Services, Inc. (NYSE: LPS) reported that starts were still down more than 31 percent year-over-year, however first-time foreclosure starts hit a five-month high. However, despite the increase, the number of first-time foreclosure starts in March was still far below those seen throughout much of 2011 and all of the previous three years.

The national foreclosure inventory stayed relatively stable in March, remaining at the historically high levels maintained since the end of 2010. This national performance masks underlying differences between judicial states, where foreclosure inventory levels stand at 6.5 percent, and non-judicial states, where foreclosure inventory levels are more than 2.5 times lower at 2.45 percent.

The March data also showed that mortgage delinquencies have continued to decline, reaching their lowest level since August 2008, with seriously delinquent inventory (loans more than 90 days delinquent) declining in both judicial and non-judicial foreclosure states. Likewise, the rate of new problem loans (seriously delinquent loans that were current six months ago) continues to improve nationally, in both judicial and non-judicial states.

On the origination front, the data showed that February mortgage originations rebounded somewhat from their January lows, and that, despite slightly higher interest rates, prepayments increased in March. Mortgage prepayment activity – a key indicator of mortgage refinances – increased broadly, across all investor categories.

As reported in LPS’ First Look release, other key results from LPS’ latest Mortgage Monitor report include:

Total U.S. loan delinquency rate:             7.09 %

Month-over-month change in delinquency rate:              -6.3 %

Total U.S. foreclosure pre-sale inventory rate: 4.14 %

Month-over-month change in foreclosure pre-sale inventory rate:          -0.1 %

States with highest percentage of non-current* loans:  FL, MS, NJ, NV, IL States with the lowest percentage of non-current* loans:  MT, AK, SD, WY, ND

Renters now spend five percent more of their household budgets on housing costs than do homeowners, and the difference is growing as rents rise.

Since 2005, homeowners’ expenditures for housing have risen from 31.9 percent of their household budget to 33.2 percent, but renters’ costs have risen even more from 35.6 percent to 38.4 percent, according to the October CoreLogic U.S. Housing and Mortgage Trends.

Since 1985, homeowners have increased their housing expenditure allocation by 12 percent, while renters increased by 22 percent.

As consumers allocate more of their expenditures toward housing, they have less money to spend on non-housing consumption. The largest decline in a household’s budget occurred in transportation expenditures which fell by 17 percent and 22 percent since 1985 for homeowners and renters, respectively, CoreLogic said.

The increased spending allocation for housing, which is largely due to the stagnation of incomes among Americans of home buying age beginning in the 1990s, has actually contributed to the decrease in homeownership by making buying a home more difficult.

Demographics have also contributed to the decline in homeownership.  For the 25 to 34 age group, the homeownership rate fell from 51.6 percent in 1980 to 42.0 percent in 2010. For 35 to 44 year olds, homeownership rates fell from 71.2 percent to 62.3 percent over the same time period.

The CoreLogic report also found that a significant number of foreclosures are remaining on the market for as long as four years or more.  One out of five REO foreclosures (21 percent) are taking more than a year to sell.  Nearly 10 percent, or 23,200 properties that were auctioned in 2006, remained in REO as of Q2 2010. In other words, these properties have been in REO continuously since 2006.