This week, I had the pleasure of discovering that this blog currently ranks in the top 20 in the Australian Women Bloggers Directory! Wowsers, that was quite a shock – but a nice shock. I’m on there with a LOT of other women bloggers I admire.
I am chuffed that so many of you enjoy popping by my blog to see what I’ve been up to – I love the fact that what I have to say and share seems to connect with and inspire so many wonderful people!
I really value the fact that my voice has reach, and I also value each and every one of you – because without you, I’d be talking into the void (and hey, I’m an only child, I talk to myself enough as it is).
And it’s because I value you – and me – that you will never find a post about a generic big-name brand on Epheriell Designs. Oh, you know the ones I mean (I’m not going to name any). The brands that court bloggers. The ones that sponsor bloggers to attend events and focus groups and whatever else, because they want a cheap (yep, cheap – do you know how much it costs to run a TV ad?!?!) and ‘authentic’ way to get their brand in front of their target market.
Now, don’t get me wrong – there are bloggers who fit right in with those big brands. A mummy blogger, for example, being sponsored by a nappy brand. That makes sense. Working with the big brands fits with their message and their voice.
However, I am not one of those bloggers.
And I kinda wish that PR companies realised that before they e-mailed me. Because oh yes, I get plenty of e-mails from brands and PR people asking me if I want to write about this or sample that.
My standard reply is a polite ‘thanks but no thanks’, though occasionally I really want to write “really, mister or miss PR person? Really? Have you even spent 10 seconds looking at my content, or have you just checked out my traffic and stats?”
I am a craft blogger. I am a lifestyle blogger. I love handmade, and vintage, and art, and pretty things. And whenever someone who owns their own little indie business e-mails me, I love it.
I don’t always end up featuring them (and, due to my absent-minded nature and eleventy billion e-mails) I don’t always get back to them, though I try. But they are awesome. They are the people I want to share with you – to talk about.
People like me, who are going out on a limb to build a tiny little business. People who are invested in what they do, heart and soul. Those are the people I want to support. Not a huge company that has an advertising budget in the millions, and who really doesn’t need my little ol’ blog post about them.
In the early days, when I first started getting contacted by PR firms and brands, I was quite excited. It felt like validation. Like someone was taking notice of me. But even then, I hesitated to say yes. And you know why?
Because the idea of saying yes gave me a squicky feeling. Which is just another way to say it felt wrong – I felt like I’d be compromising my integrity and my voice by blogging about those brands. And luckily, I listened to that squicky feeling, and refrained from going down that path. And I am so damn glad that I did.
Yes, I accept sponsors here – but only ones who fit my aforementioned requirements (passionate, smart, driven, indie biz). The people who I accept as sponsors have a business I love and want to support.
Yes, this is a for-profit blog. But over the time I’ve been blogging, I have turned down a LOT of opportunities to just ‘make money’ or get free stuff. And not only do I not regret that – I am positively proud of myself for it.
Oh, I feel the pressure. I see other bloggers working with those brands – I see other blogs with a huge list of sponsors – and it makes me feel a little threatened. I worry… “will people see my blog, and see that I don’t work with big brands, and think my blog is unpopular?” I know – lame, right?
But I refuse to take that path, because I don’t feel that is what I – as a person – or I – as a blogger – am about. I have never been interested in the newest, shiniest thing. I have never wanted to ‘keep up with the Joneses’. My cars have always been second-hand. Â I grew up wearing hand-me-downs. I’ve never been interested in buying something because it’s the ‘newest model’ or because of the brand emblazoned on it.
Epheriell Designs is about living your own DIY life – working it out for yourself, making it yourself, taking the old and making it new… it’s about making do with what you have, and if you can’t, buying it from someone who has crafted what you’re buying with love.
It’s about breaking out of the traditional way of living – about thinking differently, and striving for your perfect life, not someone else’s vision of what it might be. It’s about following your passion, and being happy, and living within your means.
Maybe I’m just a bad capitalist.
But I’d rather be that than compromise my message, my voice, and the feeling in my heart. And so I come to my last point – maybe you, like me, have questioned this move to work with brands. It’s big in the US, and it seems to be making inroads here, too.
Maybe you don’t feel that it’s something you want to do. So don’t! Don’t let the shiny buzz of being ‘noticed’ by big brands distract you from your message – from your voice.
Because if you compromise your integrity, you lose your voice, and your message has less power. Do what feels right for you, and you won’t go wrong.
Have you ever felt (or caved to) this pressure as a blogger?Â
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P.S. You MUST visit Yellow Bug Boutique and read their profile. They are the ones who make that pillow up there. It’s hilarious, and a perfect example of everything I want to support. I promise you will NOT be disappointed.
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Way to go Jess. It is exactly for those reasons I won’t do a certain craft show. As Indie businesses we get to choose who we work with, align oursleves and spend time with. Life is tooo short to be spent counting our millions anyway.lol
Trish, what would be do if we had millions, eh? I’d be bored.. ;P
I admire your philosophy very much. I had to laugh as when I was reading twitter this morning, a few tweets after yours flogging this post was for someone blogging “How to incorporate advertising on your blog”.
Lol 🙂 Thanks Sarah!
I’m definitely not against advertising on blogs (obviously) but I don’t think it should be indiscriminate… some bloggers seem to take on anything that comes their way, whether it fits with the theme of their blog or not. I don’t want to do that here!
I say good on you! You aren’t selling your soul to corporates which means you and your blog actually have integrity!
There’s been a few blogs I’ve actually stopped reading because I really don’t like the change in content and delivery once a corporate gets involved. Like food blogs that all of a sudden have recipes with nothing but mushrooms for a month or start heavily promoting cranberry juice. And even the Mummy blogs with nappies…well, it just seems less authentic.
Here, Jess, what Janine said, just far more succinctly!!
Yeah I think that a lot of blogs that do what I think of as ‘unauthentic adverstising’ (or advertising that just doesn’t fit with their blog) lose readers pretty quickly
Word, Sister. Just one thing, which maybe applies to just me, I am a mum, I blog (very randomly!) and I make. There is no way in hell I’d take money from a nappy company (not that they’ve offered 😉 ) or toy companies (again, not that they’ve offered!) because I don’t believe in what they do so I’m not only not interested in giving them money, I’m not interested in taking their money. I’ve been turned off a few blogs of late that I really enjoyed reading because I thought their content matched my understandings about parenting and life and while I CERTAINLY don’t begrudge them making a living for their family any way they see fit, the blogging about stuff because they’ve been paid for it has seen more than a few leave my reader. Like I said, I really think good on them for carving out the life they want for their family and if accepting paid posts from big companies helps them do that, then that’s great, it’s just… I don’t want to hear about the big companies! The blog I read every.single.day without fail is a mum who blogs about being a mum, she has 15000 followers and she has a paid sponsor that appears at the end of every single blog. She accepts small indi biz mums, a lot who run etsy shops and it is done in such a way that you know when it’s coming in the post and she even says, if you’re not interested, here’s your cue to leave! She funds herself through her blog but it is done in such a way that makes me respect her all the more for it!
And on that note, the baby beckons!
xo
PS – I was impressed to see how high up you were and to think, it’s all done without the big companies!
PS!!! There are some who do it spectacularly. I thought I made that point clear, don’t think I did…
I agree, 100%.
I don’t have big readership numbers, but I’m very protective of the readers who do stop by, whether it’s daily or sporadically. Either way, I feel flattered that they take time to come visit my little corner of the internets and read a little bit of what I have to say.
That alone has made me turn down PR requests. But the other part of why I say no is that I feel my readers trust me to share my own personal opinion; not opinions that were bought, but opinions that I truly, genuinely feel. That’s a big part of why I stopped even doing affiliate marketing – it just didn’t feel authentic.
This isn’t to say that I won’t blog about a big, global, brand name company if I truly love them or can get behind what they do and say. But if I do blog about them, I want people to be clear that it’s an objective review coming at them, not a paid one.
An interesting post Jess…I too admire that you’ve stuck to your principles and grown your blog and business whilst staying true to what you believe in. It’s a clear example of your commitment, drive, passion and sheer ber-loody hard work! But I have very mixed feelings about this post, because unfortunately I don’t think the world is quite as simple as DIY/small = good; big name brands = bad. I love both, for very different reasons, which I could go in to now but I’d probably bore you to tears…
Also, like Kathryn, I’m wary of passing judgement on others. Although I’m pretty much turned off by product placement/paid-for product reviews, I think there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. If you are paid to blog about a product and it just so happens that you actually really truly love that product, good-o! But if you are being deceptive in your blogging just to chase the bucks, clearly that’s not on. My blog is commercial free (and this isn’t just because my audience is so small!!!), but I recognise there are people out there for whom blogging is a job – they do what they need to do (preferably in an ethical, responsible way) to make a living. As long as they do it with integrity I’m not sure I’m in a position to judge them for doing it.
Then there’s also a bit of a grey area, I think, about who these ‘big brands’ are. For example, I ADORE ModCloth and I am one of their best customers, but most of their clothing is made in China and, well, they are a pretty big organisation these days. There are a heap of other examples of people/blogs/products that may have started off small/DIY but have grown in popularity to the point where they might be considered ‘big name brands’. So where would one draw the line? And what criteria would one use to decide? Maybe it’s not so much about size, but about the ethos of a business? I’m not sure it’s so clear cut?
Ok, one last point – you say that maybe you are a ‘bad capitalist’ but in fact you are the best capitalist! You run your own privately owned business, and you run that business for profit. You may run that business in a way that is true to your values, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a capitalist venture!
Thanks as always, for getting my brain working overtime!
Em – REALLY great response, thanks!
And I think you make a point that I wasn’t clear on in the post – you’re right – big doesn’t necessarily = evil.
I think I should have phrased it more as ‘brands that don’t fit with your theme’ AND ‘brands you don’t necessarily love’.
For me, that usually just means the ‘big’ commercial generic brands 🙂
Yes yes, this is what I mean! The ones who do it well are the ones who happen to love something for the sake of loving it and are then lucky enough to write about said thing AND get paid for it.
Jess – you “bad capitalist”, you! I love it. Thank you for writing about this. I’ve been thinking about it too. And I’m grateful for that ‘squicky’ feeling you speak of. Some ‘squicky’ feelings are veeery useful!
Since you posted or linked to that list of top Australian bloggers i have been thinking about this topic. My nursery art and book are very relevant to the “mummy blogger” but i feel like if i approach them offering to do a giveaway, they will turn me down as they only seem to feature the big corporate brands, and i mean what am i going to offer them??? What is teh best way to approach these mummy bloggers?
There was this blog ( an american mummy blog) that mentioned one of my artworks very briefly a few months ago and i have had something like 3000 hits from that blog and still get hits daily to my etsy shop. But when i approached her to do a giveaway i didnt even get a reply….. I feel like i have good fodder for these blogs but simply dont know how to get my stuff out there. I used to get blogged about quite a bit but hardly at all this year.
Kath, I think you should just go for it. If they like your stuff, chances are they’ll want to work with you!
Just send a brief e-mail introducing yourself, your work (with a few low-res pictures attached) and say you’re willing to do a giveaway.
Make sure to check if they have a ‘sponsor’ or ‘advertise’ page first though – they may outline what they will and won’t accept 🙂 Good luck x
Oh, Kathy, see you are the EXACT sort of person I WOULD support. Sadly for you I have 17 followers ;).