Wake-Up Bloggers: Stop Giving the Blog Juice Away For Free

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SWAG! This word inspires more excitement in bloggers’ hearts than a declaration that Captcha has been banned from the internet. At a blogging conference, it is the battle cry of a generation . . . or at least of the attendees who forked over big bucks to be there and want some goodies to ease the pain of the post-conference credit card statement.

Just look at the expo floor at the BlogHer 2103 Conference.

Ok this is mostly a picture of Erin, but you can kinda sorta see the expanse of the hall behind Erin.

OK, this is mostly a picture of Erin, but you can kinda sorta see the expanse of the hall behind her.

 

But that wasn’t all. There was swag distributed to our rooms too! Oh, the excitement of opening those bags!

Sisterhood of the Sensible moms

Disclaimer: All excitement in this photo is highly staged.

But Jockey was not going to be outdone. Behold the gag gift hit of the conference. It is also rumored that children all over the country have incorporated them into imaginative play. So thumbs up for enriching the youth, Jockey.

Sisterhood of the Sensible Moms

Thank you for modeling  Linda from Elleroy Was Here, Mel from According to Mags, Jess from Science of Parenthood, and Michelle from Old Dog New Tits.

Those white plastic cups are basically boobie gauges. We also got a $30 coupon off of a $60 bra. For all this, we were encouraged to accept the honor of blogging about it.

Along those lines, Denny’s paid to have laminated menus and some dollar store plastic distributed to each room with a note–Please share our exciting new menu with your followers. Oy. We bet a grand slam breakfast would have a greater chance of being devoured at a vegan block party than those menus had of making it into suitcases.

Here’s the thing, Brands, may we call you Brands? You’re treating us like customers, not like partners. Swag is fun but it doesn’t pay the bills. Stop thinking of us as hobbyists because we are businesses. We create a product in our writing that earns us readers and followers on social media platforms. We have clout. When we speak, the people who are listening care what we say because we have built relationships with them. Think laser beam attention AND interaction.

You would never ask a magazine or a newspaper to give you space for free even though you have no guarantee any reader is going to really look at your words. Readers aren’t there for your brilliant ads –so many other interesting words and shiny (in the case of newspaper, grainy) pictures to look at.  You even have to create your own ads a good portion of the time.

So with that in mind, Brands, you have no problem throwing us a coupon while smirking, “You’re welcome for that awesome blog topic, write away! Oh, and make an awesome graphic too, we hear that’s pretty popular.”

Can you understand the indignation? It’s like handing someone a coupon for paint, asking them to drive to the store to pick it up, and oh, while you’re there, buy the brushes with your own money, and then skillfully tattoo the front of your house with “Buy Slim Shady Paint” for all of your friends to see. But wait, not in an obvious way. Make it seem like you WANTED to do it.

Psst, Bloggers, now that we have Brands muttering, can we have a word with you over here? Do you know why Brands do this?

Because they are able to.

Bloggers give their websites over for free all of the time. Your energy, time, and social platform is worth more than a bottle of lotion. Stop giving the blog juice away for free even if they’re giving you some yummy cookies to go with it. YOU ARE WORTH MONETARY COMPENSATION!

Sisterhood of the Sensible Moms

So next time you get an offer,

1. Is it a product or service you believe in and think your readers would too? If no, don’t do it. Integrity is the basis of your writing product.

2. If yes, and you haven’t seen any money in the initial contact, ask them what their budget is. If they say “no money” or don’t cough up some serious merchandise, scroll away. While a nice laptop may be worth your time, a stick of deodorant never is.

3. If they make an offer of $10 and the lint in their pockets, ask for what you are worth. If they balk, scroll away.

4. If they say, “Why yes, we did find money for you in this huge bank account we have,” you have just realized your worth AND made the internet a better place for your blogging brothers and sisters. And you now have the moolah for a web designer to fix your slow upload speed. Or for a mortgage payment. Homes are important.

We have a list for you too, Brands. Don’t think we forgot about you.

“Don’ts” for Brands

1. Don’t give us materials thinking it is an honor for us to share them. We have other interesting topics to write about, thanks.

2. Stop treating us like customers. A catalog does not count as swag. Or compensation.

3. Don’t ask us to use hours of our time for a chance to win a prize. Would you give up your paycheck for a spin of the roulette wheel to win a sofa?

4. Don’t blow your blogging budgets on huge parties where there is no real point beyond an open bar. What is a blogger supposed to do with that? Take that money and pay some bloggers to work directly with you. If you buy a blogger a drink, she says thank you and walks away. If you pay her a salary, she gives you value and she can stock her own fridge.

5. If you’re still going with the party thing because you think a tweet is worth a chafing dish of crab dip, for the love of ease please have your Twitter handles and Instagram accounts posted. Symbols on your banners don’t help. We can’t click on them.

6. Don’t just pick any bloggers to work with you. Do your research and pick the ones who are a good fit. Your return on your investment will go cha-ching and you’ll actually see that yes indeed, this is THE way to reach customers.

And we’ll end it on a positive note:

THE “Do” for Brands

Do treat bloggers like the business people we are.

 

-Ellen and Erin

 

 

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59 thoughts on “Wake-Up Bloggers: Stop Giving the Blog Juice Away For Free”

  1. Seriously Kate

    I feel like I should be standing at a pep rally cheering on the blogging team! Just picture me in the crowd with both hands in the air, clapping going woo!!!

    Great post, great advice. 🙂

    Kate

    Reply ↓
    1. The Sisterhood Post author

      Your blog deserves respect because you’ve worked so hard to make it fantastic. There is never a need to settle. Like you said, selectivity only attracts bigger and better opportunities. Ellen

      Reply ↓
  12. Farrah

    I do agree with you. In fact, I find some of the swaggering somewhat over the top and gross, giving all of us a bad name truth be told.

    So while I am totally in agreement over how we need to stand up and try to create some kind of standard policy or what have you for bloggers- I also feel like there is a rather unbalanced arena of support for bloggers outside of the cliques, etc- and if they are trying to make it on their own- alone, without any support- if they DON’T try to get themselves going somewhere- who will?

    I have no issues supporting a ‘brand’ on my own, for my own reasons- whether or not I take something from them in return. Overwhelming support of the mom blogging community isn’t exactly something I’m familiar with, and that’s cool for me. I do what I do and make it into what works. Unfortunately that is looked down upon by some, but hey- I gotta start somewhere.
    Farrah recently posted..Fall Surprises and Missing Pumpkin SpiceMy Profile

    Reply ↓
    1. The Sisterhood Post author

      I think the whole point is for bloggers not to undersell or undervalue themselves. So many times we have gotten offers to do something for a brand with no mention of compensation in the email. When we finally had enough sense to ask for it, suddenly money appeared. It was there, we just had to the gumption to ask.

      We have also gotten turned down because those brands have bloggers who are willing to give their space away for free. I hate to see people undervaluing the platforms they have so carefully created.

      But with that being said, we also write about things we love without it being a sponsored post. Keens is a good example of that. Man, do we love our Keens. Nikon is another example. It is our camera of choice and we mention it often. But these things only come up if they are a natural part of the post we are writing.

      As far as support goes, Facebook Groups are a good place to develop that. Message bloggers you like and read (ahem) and see if there are any groups they belong to that would be a good fit. Or, you can start your own and invite like minded bloggers to join.
      Ellen
      The Sisterhood recently posted..Wake-Up Bloggers: Stop Giving the Blog Juice Away For FreeMy Profile

      Reply ↓
  16. Mayor Gia

    Good advice! I rarely get approached by brands, and I’ve never actually taken any up on any advertising (but if sutter home ever calls, i’m renaming my blog “mayor of sutterhomeville”). Anyhoo, I’ve never gotten any that are a good fit – for example, some online scrapbooking thing offered me free scrapbooking software. It’s like, um, have you read my blog? There is nothing about me that screams “scrapbooking!”
    Mayor Gia recently posted..Student Loans are BullshitMy Profile

    Reply ↓
    1. The Sisterhood Post author

      Just know it is your right to ask for compensation or to just walk away from an offer. By maintaining the integrity of your blog, the offers that are perfect for you and your audience will come along . . . or you can seek them out.

      Ellen

      Reply ↓
  21. Monica Ricci

    Great stuff! I’m not a mom nor a mom blogger but I am a blogger and wholeheartedly support everything you just wrote. Also, there are plenty of brands who want you to blog FOR them for no compensation, but hey, it’s “GREAT EXPOSURE”. (Uh-huh and FREE expert content for YOUR site). No thankee.

    I shared your post via Twitter. Loved it.

    ~Monica

    Reply ↓
  22. Colleen

    This is such an interesting post and I understand many of the points being made. However, as a PR agency president who’s been working with bloggers for many years I have a perspective from this side of the table that I wanted to share.

    Question for you – do you want to be treated like businesses or journalists? We work with journalists, we don’t pay them for their reviews or their opinions. That’s what the ad sales department is for. Now, I understand that many brands are clueless and many PR agencies are equally clueless to the benefits of working with bloggers, so I see your frustration there.

    If it’s a complicated contest or photography that we’re asking for then we’d certainly pay for that service from a blogger, that’s very fair.

    Also, it’s very hard to treat some of the bloggers like businesses when they approach us (dozens and dozens a week) with terrible form letters saying they’ll help put our clients on the map. Their sites are not appealing, they are not good writers and they generally take up a very good chunk of our time saying no thank you.

    We love bloggers and have a wonderful relationship with many out there, so I fully understand the value of what good bloggers can do. As far as the swag at an event goes, who’s OKing the products? Why isn’t there a better vetting system to weed out the junk?

    This is new to many (brands, PR people and bloggers) so there’s a learning curve and I don’t believe there’s one right answer. Perhaps this would be a good topic at the next blogger conference. I volunteer to represent my side of the story!

    Reply ↓
    1. The Sisterhood Post author

      Thank you so much for coming by and so thoughtfully commenting. Brands and blogging are working on this learning curve together. I think the thing to remember with journalists, is that while the PR firm or brand is not paying them for their review or article, someone is. They are being paid by their website or print publication to write.

      Bloggers write for free but are paid to advertise. I think it starts to get muddled because of definition of terms. There are straight up reviews. We don’t really do them except for books, and yes, we will do them for just the “product.” But we often do reviewed book lists on our own so it fits in with our brand and what we love to do anyway.

      The type of advertising campaign I’m talking about; I don’t even know what to call it. It is where a brand asks you to write for them. Not exactly about their product, but weaving a story including their product in the style of your blog that will hook your readers in. These posts often take a lot of effort to make them entertaining to encourage readers to go past the first FTC disclosure indicating that it’s sponsored. So theses brands get the benefit of their product being presented to an audience who is ready to receive our every word AND they get links, right there, that can whisk the reader away to their sites the moment we convince them to do so. Then the brands get the power of our social media platforms when we share the post. We ARE the writers, the magazine creators, editors, distributors, and ad department all rolled up into one.

      You make a VERY good point that someone had to approve those products that ended up in our rooms. I guess I was just hoping that in the future brands could be a little more savvy about it. You know what would have encouraged me to look into Denny’s more than handing me a menu and a plastic cup? If they said they were donating food to a shelter on my behalf, I would have been inspired. The menu and plastic cup just seemed like such a waste of money for them. They could have used it in such a smarter way.

      I think you would make an excellent speaker at a blogging conference with the way your comment was presented here. But here is my question, would you expect to be compensated or would you do it for free?

      Thank you so much for stopping by. Ellen

      Reply ↓
  23. Amy Renea

    Oh GOODNESS number three to brands — that is the WORST to me. A “chance” to win something — can’t press delete quickly enough! I am much less offended by offers of merchandise than the offer of a “chance” to get something. grrrrrrr….

    Reply ↓
  24. mara

    I like this a lot, and I think you make very good points. But, if we want to be taken seriously as media, we have to make sure we understand the distinction between editorial and advertorial. To me, pay ensures a certain spot or story, but once you’re paid you’re not longer impartial or unbiased. A true review can never be compensated, just like in magazines where editorial may feature products that were sent by companies, but they are not paid to feature those products (but they may be ‘encouraged’ by purchasing ad space.) I would never want someone to be able to say, ‘Well, they paid you to say you like it.’ That wouldn’t sit well with me. Just something to think about.

    Reply ↓
    1. The Sisterhood Post author

      I think the shift that has to happen is that we need to stop thinking of blogging as an offshoot of print publications. It is having the growing pains of being recognized as it’s own genre. However, it is being helped mightily by the fact that magazines and newspapers are struggling with their circulations.

      I will still maintain, that while a print journalist is not receiving money from a product to write, they are receiving money from the publication. And that publication receives advertising money from products. We’ve just been conditioned to not see that as bias. Here is our integrity: we would never write about a product we did not wholeheartedly endorse of think was worth our reader’s time. We turn down offers every week.

      I guess our point is, for bloggers to start seeing value in the unique platforms they have created and not to sell themselves short. We are the “new” frontier in writing.

      Ellen

      Reply ↓
  28. amy

    Thank you so much for this!! You are spot on. I have just recently started to put my foot down and say no when all I’m being offered is a new sandwich spread. It’s hard because you don’t want to burn bridges, but on the other hand, if a company underestimates your value in such a way, it’s probably not a bridge worth maintaining. Well said.
    amy recently posted..Silhouette 25% off Sale!My Profile

    Reply ↓
    1. The Sisterhood Post author

      We also have learned that “like” attracts “like.” You attract more offers that you want to get by only accepting the offers that line up with your brand and worth. Thanks for stopping by. Ellen

      Reply ↓
  29. Colleen

    Hi Ellen,

    Thanks for your kind words and thoughtful response as well.

    I very much agree with your comment (and Mara’s above) that if it’s more ‘advetorial’ then you should absolutely be paid. For me, and the clients we represent however, we would never ask a blogger to do that. It does not feel authentic and there’s less credibility. I do have the pleasure of working with some very high-end brands, so I’m sure it’s harder for smaller brands trying to make a mark. But you should be paid for that service.

    As for your question about whether or not I’d expect to be paid for speaking at a conference. In this case, absolutely not. This would be considered industry education and it’s good for everyone. Now if I were to become a full-time spokesperson for the industry and that’s all I was doing (as a business owner) I’d need to find a way to make that profitable.

    Great conversation happening here, this is why women should rule the world! 🙂

    Reply ↓
  32. Gabrielle@MamaGab

    Excellent post! I’m new to monetizing my blog, but have recently had the opportunity to do paid reviews. So after reading this post, I received an email for stuff that someone wanted to send me in return for a review. Because I’d read this post, I had the courage to speak up. I simply let them know the amounts I’ve been paid in the past for reviews and told them that I would give them the low end of that range. Even though I was receiving free product, it wasn’t something I was super thrilled about and it would take time from my family, time that I felt should be compensated. They were very kind and said they are not doing paid reviews at this point, but if they decide to do that, then they’ll contact me. No ugliness on anyone’s part–we both simply stated our needs. I was happy I had read this post and had the courage to communicate that. Now I’ll go back to Sverve and the other companies that help bloggers get paid to promote brands.
    Gabrielle@MamaGab recently posted..The Depression Series: What Was it Like?My Profile

    Reply ↓

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  35. Katie

    The moment you get paid is the moment you lose credibility. If you get sent something great and choose to blog about it, I will trust that review if I know you haven’t been paid, the moment money exchanges hands you’re nothing but a cheap advert to me.
    Also, if you choose to blog about everything free you’re sent, then again, you lose credibility.
    A blog is not a business, it’s a hobby. In my opinion.

    Reply ↓

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