Is guest posting dead or have I just been doing it badly

Spent $2,400 on guest posts across 18 sites last quarter. Rankings: basically flat. Referral traffic: 61 visits total, combined, in three months.

Either the sites I used were garbage, or the model is done. I suspect the former. Every one of them had a "write for us" page, which in hindsight is the tell.

Any site with a "write for us" page is selling links to everyone, including your competitors and three casinos. You bought into a link farm with nice branding.

The guest posts that worked for me were on sites that had never taken one before and had to be talked into it. That is slow and does not scale, which is exactly why it works.

So the answer is I have been doing it badly. Fine. Expensive lesson, posting it so someone else does not repeat it.

Worth checking whether those 18 sites link out to each other. Usually they do.