You guys.
Your response to this post made me so incredibly stoked.
You’re still here!
You still like to read and write about beautiful, crazy, complicated, imperfect life!
We’re in this together. We want to share, relate and be a community.
We like authenticity. We like fashion and crafts and recipes; but mostly we like real.
A lot of us don’t like sponsored posts; I get it.
How can you be real if you’re getting paid to say something?
BUT.
No matter how much you love your hypothetical part-time job, it wouldn’t be feasible for you to do it for hours and hours each day if you never got compensated for it.
Unless you’re an heiress. Or you have a generous and well off sig-othe who fully supports your weird unpaid part-time job. I am neither of these things.
But I love writing.
That’s why I studied it and spent way too many hours hunting for a job semi-related to it in the years since graduation. That’s why I started this blog. I wanted to write and I didn’t know how else to do that.
Somewhere along the way I found writing gigs that paid me.
They’re out there, but they’re hard to find. And to keep once attained, for that matter.
Then, once you find it and keep it, you write what someone else tells you to. You’re getting paid because you’re fulfilling a need for someone else.
Blogs are different.
I can come here and write whatever I want whenever I want. That’s why I keep doing it. It’s time-consuming and a lot of times happy hour trumps getting a post up in time for peak viewage (ahem, one too many might be why this post is a day late), but it’s the best thing in the world.
Words. Freedom. America. What?
The things that I write because I need to pay rent, feed my sausage dog, buy #ootds that don’t have holes in them and eat all the food the Bay Area has to offer, are not necessarily the most fun projects because they’re work. Blogging doesn’t feel like work, so I fully support bloggers who get paid to do just that. Getting to write what you want 98% of the time and then every once in a while writing something that you have the majority of creative control over while getting paid just sounds awesome.
Once the ratio shifts, however, things get tricky. Striking a balance is hard. So is paying your bills. And making a living being creative in general.
It’s kind of like those perfume ads in magazines that are trying to sell you a scent, but also they’re just gorgeous photos of women floating in ribbons of silky alien material with floating crystals and glitter wind.
If glitter wind isn’t your thing, you turn the page.
Or you don’t click on the link.
But if it’s a magazine that has an ad on every other page, I’m not going to buy it.
I’ll still sniff the perfume samples though. And maybe rub them on my wrists.
Anyway, chances are you’ve seen a sponsored post or two around these parts. I had a blast writing them, and I’m sure I’ll be writing more of them at some point.
Hopefully it won’t be the end of us.
Hopefully it won’t be the end of us.
Cuz.. I kinda like you.
I hope I didn't miscommunicate the other day. I really don't begrudge a blogger her sponsored posts. BUT, I raise my eyebrow when a blogger does any of the following:
– Shills for a competitor of a brand she's previously been sponsored by
– Takes a sponsorship for a product/service she has never, ever once posted anything relevant to
– Lets sponsored content change the tone of her blog.
As a fellow writer, I totally, TOTALLY get where you're coming from with this whole post. I truly do. But I think when the above happens, integrity is compromised. And I don't want to read product recommendations from a person whose word I can't trust. And if I fell in love with your blog because you were funny and charming and wise, and then you became a blogger who only posts what you're paid to post, then you're not a lifestyle/personal blogger anymore, and I'm simply not interested. I can read ad copy elsewhere and not feel like I'm being duped. Ya know?
There is absolutely a medium though. And there is a way for skilled writers to promote for brands without sounding like they're writing a press release. (Problem is, skilled writer is not synonymous with blogger, and a lot of times the content is more reflective of the brand's mission statement than the blogger's personal opinion.)
I've done a few sponsored posts, and entertained the idea of doing more. I've changed my stance for my personal blog though, because I have enough demands on my time without the work entailed in growing readership to make brands happy, ya know? It's not the sponsored content in and of itself that I find fault with. It's what I've seen it do to some bloggers.
Anyway, I've rambled enough. I still love ya, and I'll still keep stopping by here. xoxo