I’ve honestly been wanting to write about this for quite sometime now but I wasn’t sure how people would react. You know, who am I to say what’s what? I’m a blogger, how would I know? Well…
Last night I was invited to a dinner event hosted by a random company. They wanted a lot of deliverables out of me for just dinner. I politely turned them down saying I can’t commit to posting a ton of content for a free dinner. They emailed again giving me a rate of $250 for attending the event and posting about the event. Again, I turned them down because A. That’s much lower than my normal rate and B. I’m just not interested in shooting content all night at random dinner.
If you aren’t a blogger or influencer, I’m sure you’re really confused about why I wouldn’t want to go to a free dinner and get paid $250 for it. The answer is so simple. I’m not here for the money… I’m not here to make a few quick bucks and bombard you with a ton of event videos and photos of brands I’m not even familiar with. I’m here to give you quality and enjoyable content.
I look back at that event today and see 10 bloggers who did decide to go to that event. I honestly sighed because the bloggers that did go were so… expected. I thought “man some bloggers and influencers are really killing this space for us”. A space of authenticity and realness. Some of you may think who cares if those 10 bloggers went and got $250. You know why I care? Because it affects all of us as a whole. It affects how you guys the readers perceive us as a group, it affects how media perceives us to be (millennials not working hard & wanting free shit), it affects all of our rates for the future projects that come in, affects how brands think of us and our worth as influencers, I mean the domino effect goes on and on.
As bloggers and influencer, I think a lot of us are forgetting why we’re in this space. I do feel that most
Free products
yes- the biggest perks to this job are free products. However, I have asked 20+ brands to stop shipping me PR packages. Especially the brands that I don’t ever use or would buy. I have also asked brands not to ship me PR packages that are going to be wasteful or over the top. I just don’t need that in my life and more importantly, I’m trying my best to reduce my ecological footprint this year so no additional waste
Events
Not gonna lie, I’m not the biggest fan of events. As I’ve gotten older I’m just more anti-social and more of a homebody. But who wants to see me on the couch watching tv all night, right? Plus I work from home so it’s necessary to get a breath of fresh air and actually talk to people in real life otherwise John will literally eat my head off! Now there’s an event every night, so I pick and chose my events very carefully. I’ll only attend an event if it’s something super exciting and interesting to me or if it’s a brand I want to support or meet. Thankfully since we all have the same taste here, I know you guys would be curious and interested in it too but I always make sure to not make my instagram all about events because honestly who can relate to that?
Ad / Sponsored posts
I really want to get into this whole subject on a separate blog post because I have so much to say but I also don’t want it to get all boring and sh*t so, for now, I’ll say that I’m 100% behind every brand I’ve worked with. I will ALWAYS use a product for at least one month before giving my thoughts. The last Clarin’s campaign I worked on they asked me for a photo the minute I got the product, and I was like no no no. I let them know that’s not how I work. I need at least a few weeks to test before I can talk about and if they didn’t like that then they can use another influencer. Well, guess what, I’m still on this campaign and still using this product every day. So being honest and genuine pays off. Will go more into this in my next blog post!
Overall authenticity
I may not have the best engagement or highest follower count or the coolest photos ever but I really do pride myself on being authentic every day of my life. I’ve never followed any trend that didn’t fit for me (AKA take photos in a grocery store!) and my feed has always
I know this was a long post but I’m glad we’re all on the same page now and you guys know exactly where my heart is coming from! Thanks for reading and I’ll see you guys in the next one.
xx