I am in no means an experienced blogger and in no way am I claiming to be. I have been blogging a little over a year and in my time I’ve learnt a few things. One main thing that you learn when writing a blog is that people value your opinion. Strangers, people that you have never even spoken to actually value your honest opinion so whenever I get asked anything blog/beauty related weather it be simple questions like ‘what is your favourite mascara?’ or ‘how do I add BlogLovin to my blog?’ of course I try and answer as best and honestly as I can.
I am a member on Facebook of several blogging type groups. One of the main ones I use is amazing for any blog related help you might need. Myself and a few others have been noticing a few threads on there recently all relating to the same topic. It has become apparent that a certain brand (that I will not name) have been getting on a lot of peoples nerves lately. Firstly I saw others writing about it, and today I encountered it first hand. A PR company, and thats the only clue I’ll give. A lot of bossy, 'do this do that’ emails for pretty much nothing in return. Of course a lot of PR companies don’t always have budgets to pay people for blog posts and I completely understand that but can they really ask new (and old) bloggers to do all sorts, sometimes spending hours on blog posts for nothing? I think not.
Rewind 6 months and I would have jumped at the chance to potentially win a prize. Just writing a simple blog post and having the chance to win a PRIZE?! It doesn’t matter what prize, the point is you could WIN! I’ll be the first to admit I did a few of these ‘blog about us, promote us loads on social media and be entered to a draw to never win anything’ blog posts for a few brands but when you start getting better opportunities and you see your blog grow more, you realise that you don’t need to do that. I’d rather spend my valuable free time writing relevant blog posts or interacting with other bloggers than writing a pointless, non relevant post for nothing. I remember once I spent a whole college day perfecting a blog post (when I obviously should have been working!) to come third and ultimately, that meant absolutely nothing.
It’s all about knowing your worth. You, as a blogger are worth so much more than promoting brands for absolutely nothing in return. A lot of them try it on but you really need to remember you wouldn’t work for free so why should you spend your free time blogging, for free? You shouldn’t. And please don’t think you should. No matter what the companies tell you, it won’t get you anywhere any faster than a bit of hard work will.
