Welcome to the first edition of Blogger Question. It’s a quick way for me to answer questions that come up and to also share the responses with you. Most of these will be short and sweet, but hopefully you’ll find them to be helpful. Question authors are not named in an effort to allow even the most basic question to be asked.
Question
I’ve got contacted by a company wanting to provide a post to my blog. Basically, the post is okay, it’s about how you can express yourself and boost your self confidence with fashion. The post would includes pictures from the company store and a link to the shop. It’s not talking about the company at all but there’s picks and a link.
I don’t know what to think about it, it just looks like free publicity to me. I’m always happy to promote products I love (even for free), but since I never bought things from that particular store so I can’t say if I do or not. I’m asking myself, what’s in it for me ? I don’t want it to pass as fake either.
Answer
Without a doubt, you should not post the content to your site for free. You also shouldn’t just delete the email. The proper way to handle this is to respond by asking them what their budget is and go from there. They’ll probably tell you $20 – $30 and at that point you can decide if it’s worth your time. You could even counter at $10 – $20 higher than what they respond with, but depending on the size of your blog and SEO relevancy, it may or may not be worth the extra amount. Now, if you have a well established site that is highly authoratative, an offer of $20 – $30 won’t make the grade.
Posting this type of content certainly won’t come across as being a “fake” so long as it’s done correctly. Here are a few tips:
1) Don’t let these types of post become the majority of your content.
2) If your site, for example, is all about pizza, don’t start adding in posts about steak and other things that don’t seem to be a good fit.
3) Make sure the company is providing you with an original well written article.
Hope that helps.
