First off, let me say that I never started this blog with the intention of having it be a moneymaking proposition. And if you've been hanging around and reading me for awhile, you know that I'm not review/giveaway/promotion central. And you can guess that even though I've put some google ads on the blog, I am NOT seeing any income from this blog.
But the day has finally come.
The day that I was contacted out-of-the-blue by a company to promote their business on my blog.
Ok, I am a member of BlogSpark, and they sent me soup to try and review once....and nifty bowls for my trouble to keep and cherish forever. lol
But this blog isn't a revenue generator.
But now I've been emailed by a business's "social media representative" to talk up a certain business's new, I'll use the word "gimmick" for lack of a better term at the moment.
Basically, they want me to do their advertising for them to my readers.
Oh, and they didn't offer me anything in exchange for my "services" if I do, nor did they offer me anything to offer to my readers(free product or a giveaway prize) to get ya'll excited to listen to the shpeel.
Publicizing or advertising or writing a review for a company or a product is work, it's not fun. And if you have ever written reviews or promotion shpeel, you know that already.
So unless I am getting something(either free swag, cash, coupons, etc.)I really don't feel inclined to do someone else's work for them. Do these advertising reps do their job for free? I think not....
OTOH, if I have a personal experience with a product or business and feel compelled to write an unsolicited review or opinion just because I want to without any expectation of compensation, I will...and I have.
So what would you do?
Or if you have a blog and review/promote stuff, what do you do?
Do you insist on compensation for promoting a business when a company contacts you in hopes that you will promote them?
Or do you promote products/businesses out of the goodness of your heart....or in hopes that one day their media consultants see you mention them favorably in your blog and send you a 'thank you' for giving them such good publicity?
I don't want my blog to become a giveaway central or a strictly "here's the deal or the hot coupon".
There are tons of blogs out there that do that already.
My blog is more personal experiences and thoughts with the deals, hot coupons & giveaways thrown in. It's just a part of what I do and who I am. I don't want to lose the humaness of it all here.
I just don't know what direction I should go in from this point forward.
Any feedback or ideas would be appreciated.
Sluggy
**Here are my 2 cents (probably more like 7 cents) - LOL!**
ReplyDeleteOkay, so, they want you to spin their product for free? Nah. Not unless you already use their product (or service) and would be promoting it anyway, whether they contacted you or not, because you like it. OR if they offer some sort of comp like money or freebies or better yet samples of the actual product (service) so you can see for yourself if it's any good, like the Purex folks. But that's my opinion :) I enjoyed trying the Zevia soda and being able to write honestly about it after taste-testing their samples. On the other hand, if Coke (a product I LOVE) contacted me and asked me to push their product but with absolutely no incentive to do so, just to help them out, I probably wouldn't - that's their job, and they've got lots of my money already to fund their ad department with.
But mostly I just like to write about whatever appeals to me each day... and I love reading your blog because you seem to do the same, write about lots of different things that are fun to read about :)
/off soap box