Sponsored Post
Image Source
Blogging and brand relationships can be an absolute minefield, particularly because when it comes to the business aspect of blogging, not many influencers and bloggers are willing to open up. Whether that be how to get collaborations, how to find brand contacts, or even what to charge and how to deal with the finance side of things. I personally love helping out other bloggers, sharing the things that I’ve picked up along this crazy blogging journey, in the hope that someone in the same shoes that I was once in – won’t have to go through some of the difficulties that I went through! For example; I once charged a very well known brand an extremely low fee, and found out through another blogger with lower stats than me that they were actually paying others hundreds of pounds. I was very new to the whole finance side of blogging back then, I had no idea what I should be charging, and I really got taken advantage of. I like to advise others so that nobody else gets taken advantage of like that, because quite frankly, it’s not a great feeling. You can start earning money through your blog at any stage, a small influence is still an influence. I am definitely classed as a micro blogger, but micro bloggers are the in thing these days – brands are seeing how much influence we really have and it’s now possible to earn a living from this whole thing, even if you’ve got less than 15k followers. So, if you’re here to learn more about the business side of blogging, let’s dig in…
How does a collaboration benefit both the brand & the blogger?
When brands reach out to bloggers, the relationship has to be mutual. It’s bad practice for brands to take advantage of bloggers, but it’s just as bad practice to lie to brands about stats including buying followers and likes etc. As bloggers, we are offering a brand an advertising platform, social media and blogs are the way of today and an advert placed on a blog is way more likely to gravitate sales than it is if placed on national TV. This is why it’s possible to earn a living even as a micro blogger, almost every brand these days has a budget for social media or blog outreach. Mostly the reason for this is because people can actually relate to a blogger/influencer, it’s less of an advertisement and more of a lifestyle. We build an audience based on trust, so if someone is following you, they are 99% likely to come to you for an honest opinion. This is great marketing for brands, because they can send you a product to review, get your opinion on it in the hope that you will love it (this is why you should only work with brands you know you’ll love or already love!) and share it with your audience. Once your blog post is placed within google search, it’s now there for anyone to see when searching for a review of said brand. And how often do we all google things and read reviews before buying something? So as a blogger we receive product and payment in exchange for our photos, write ups and time, and the brand receives an advert to potentially thousands once it’s on the web. It must pay off because it’s become one of the most popular ways for brands to advertise!
Where can you find collaborations?
Everywhere. Honestly everywhere, you can email brands directly yourself by finding their PR contact through their website or maybe an agency, you can drop a message to their social accounts asking for a contact email – or you can sign up to the hundreds of websites available that connect bloggers with brands and vice versa. A blogger outreach service is always a good one to pop in google as so many will come up, and my best advice is to just sign up to them all. A couple of good examples include Get Blogged or The Blogger Programme. Some of them you’ll have to apply for opportunities on the platform, others will make your details available to brands and they’ll get in touch with you through the platform or sometimes even directly. I really recommend signing up to as many as possible, as it means your details and your work are more wide spread and it means that you’ll get seen more, therefore you have more opportunity to get more collaborations. There’s also a ton of apps these days too, for bloggers as well as instagrammers/influencers, I always find instagram work is great extra income so it’s definitely worth signing up to those too. But my best advice would be to focus on your blog because in my experience, it’s my blog that brings me in 90% of my income, it’s such a valuable corner of the internet and a lot of people don’t know it.
Now it’s time to get googling and signing up to platforms – good luck!