The Sydney Morning Herald has an article about Mom bloggers making money off their blog.
They use Twitter and their blog posts to promote what companies want to promote. Then they get paid, or they get reimbursed for trying out the product or service.
It's tempting to say I'd never sell out like that. But I might one day get an offer that's too tempting to refuse. (So far I HAVE gotten offers, but most have not been the least bit tempting).
What I will say is I have no interest in reading blogs that are full of advertisements and have posts that sound like promotional brochures.
I'd rather have the advertisements, though, because then it's upfront and honest.
To me, it's more annoying when the commercial is carefully weaved into the content.
I love Stephen Colbert, but I find all the Ben and Jerry promotional stuff to be very annoying. It was funny at first. But then it got old.
Now I'm having this fantasy where Qantas or Virgin emails me and says, We'll fly your family free to Australia if you write a post about your flight. I can't imagine refusing that. I wouldn't feel my ethics are compromised as long as I could be upfront and say the trip was paid for by the company, and I was obliged to write about it.
The Sydney Morning Herald article talks about an alcoholic who was offered $1000 to write about a Vodka brand. If they had read the blog, they would have known how inappropriate the offer was.
That's one of the things that really annoys me. When I get offers for my blog, it's overly clear that there was no research or reading done. I think I'd be much more open to saying yes if it looked to me like the company actually took the time to read a few posts.
They use Twitter and their blog posts to promote what companies want to promote. Then they get paid, or they get reimbursed for trying out the product or service.
It's tempting to say I'd never sell out like that. But I might one day get an offer that's too tempting to refuse. (So far I HAVE gotten offers, but most have not been the least bit tempting).
What I will say is I have no interest in reading blogs that are full of advertisements and have posts that sound like promotional brochures.
I'd rather have the advertisements, though, because then it's upfront and honest.
To me, it's more annoying when the commercial is carefully weaved into the content.
I love Stephen Colbert, but I find all the Ben and Jerry promotional stuff to be very annoying. It was funny at first. But then it got old.
Now I'm having this fantasy where Qantas or Virgin emails me and says, We'll fly your family free to Australia if you write a post about your flight. I can't imagine refusing that. I wouldn't feel my ethics are compromised as long as I could be upfront and say the trip was paid for by the company, and I was obliged to write about it.
The Sydney Morning Herald article talks about an alcoholic who was offered $1000 to write about a Vodka brand. If they had read the blog, they would have known how inappropriate the offer was.
That's one of the things that really annoys me. When I get offers for my blog, it's overly clear that there was no research or reading done. I think I'd be much more open to saying yes if it looked to me like the company actually took the time to read a few posts.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteTake two.
ReplyDeleteIt is very annoying when you receive request or offers like that when they are totally irrelevant to your blog.
So the question to you is that having established your are open to commercial persuasion, what is your price? Somewhat lower than three return air fares to Oz. What if they say, if you say positive things about our airline, there will be another set of tickets for you all, valid for five years?
I wish...
ReplyDeleteAndrew:
ReplyDeleteYeah...difficult questions there. All of it would be tempting.
I'd feel really uneasy to be offered random tickets in exchange for me writing a positive review. Because what if my experience isn't positive? Then I'd have to outright lie.
In your scenario...I don't get the free tickets until after I've already bought tickets and flown. Right? If they ask me to write a positive review without knowing my experience, I guess I'd feel okay if it WAS a positive experience.
Better yet...what if they offered me the tickets after I filled out a customer survey. If I gave them high scores and then they asked me to write about it...I wouldn't be lying.
I would hope though that I could write something that fits my usual writing style rather than something that sounds like a promotional brochure.
I can't though imagine myself naturally having a very positive airline post. The best I could do would probably be something like "I was so uncomfortable. I was so bored. I felt like I was in hell. At one point I thought the plane would crash. But on the bright side, the flight attendants were really nice".
Fruitcake: Yep. Although I do imagine that getting paid for blogging would take some of the fun out of blogging.
The exception would be if there's no pressure to change your blog's content. If you can maintain the freedom and still get rich...that might be nice.
Andrew:
ReplyDeleteWhat about you? Have you had any good offers for your blog? Have you ever accepted any?
If not...what would be YOUR price?