Currently I've heard that people gradually change their strategy to guest blogging/planning quite a lot (much, much more than in the past). My friends also said that it is effective and easy to use, and so I take a bit research about it. Basically I understand it as asking an site owner to publish my own article on his site, including links to my ranking page/site. Of course there will be a deal with that site owner but it will depend on different situations. Thing is, I don't think it is that "easy" like my friends said: "just sendind mail asking for tons of site owners and you will eventually get several deals". I don't know how particular he did it but there must be some sort of plan to it, or it's just he has tons of people working on sending mails.
What do you think? Is it easy? Is it effective?