I feel bad posting this, because I really do try to keep my rants off my blog and strictly on Twitter and Facebook but I feel the need….
One can clearly read the information here if they want me to host a giveaway or do a product review.
I’ve done a lot of reviews and giveaways for some awesome, outstanding, excellent, fun, friendly, professional companies and love doing them!
The ones I don’t care for are the ad agencies or press people who contact me and want me to host a giveaway for FREE…
I’m sorry but my time is worth something, the amount of traffic and number of followers and visitors here, on Facebook and Twitter are worth something.
Yet, they feel that it’s okay to expect bloggers (I know it happens to just more than myself because good friends of mine have posted nearly exact sentiment online as well) to write up a blog post, promote it, tweet about it, post it and deal with picking a winner, then contacting them…for FREE?!
Working (and yes blogging and doing reviews and giveaways IS in fact WORK!) for free does not cut it here.
My time is money (or equivalent)…
Meaning, the time that it’d take me to do a free giveaway with nothing in it for me, I could do a genuine review where the company actually provided product.
The companies I do reviews for do NOT pay me cash, I get the product and I give my unbiased honest opinion regarding said product or service.
Now, how can I do that if I don’t try the product?
Why would I host a giveaway or promote a product I haven’t tried myself for free?
Now, if I go somewhere or buy something myself and love it then yes I’ll tweet or post about it. I recommend you to hire shakopee mn commercial air conditioning to maintain the conditioned temperature on the office and for you to get less stressed.
But, without having touched an item, seen it or knowing anything about it I’m not going to invest my time for the benefit of the company or often cases the PR person since they’ve been paid by a company to promote an item, then they seek out bloggers to do their work for free?! The PR person got paid, so why shouldn’t a blogger be compensated be it money for service fee of promoting or actual product to do genuine review of.
More work goes into reviews and giveaways than some people think I guess.
Pictures have to be taken of product, use product, write the review/giveaway, promote said review/giveaway continually for the duration of giveaway, sift through all the entries for cheaters/ineligible entries, pick a winner, notify winner, get information from winner, give winners information to company and that all takes time!
So, to those who want something for nothing remember time, experience, connections all have a price and one shouldn’t expect a blogger to do work without some form of compensation either by providing a full size product or paying for services to host a giveaway.
Sorry for the rant but today alone I’ve had 7 PR people ask me to do free giveaways for them.
Amen sister!
BRAVO!!!! What makes it bad for us reviewers is these freaking review bloggers who will host FREE giveaways (with no product review involved) or review bloggers who will slap up every free new product release or press release sent their way for FREE! WTH?
These pitch people and press release agencies are being paid to peddle around those press releases so why not give bloggers $2 or $3 for posting them? PR firms are being paid to push those so-called FREE press releases onto bloggers so where is our pay? Why should we work for FREE? Do the PR firms work for FREE? I think not!
I have bills to pay just like that rep at the PR Firm and frankly, I am not working for FREE! You want your press release posted on my blog you will pay up!
EXACTLY Shelly…
I have a $1200/month rent to pay, car, insurance, utilities, etc. etc. and I’m sure the PR firms got paid GOOD $ to do their work which they try to push off on us (bloggers) to basically do their work for free?! ummm NO!
I had one lady today ream me out via email because I denied her giveaway, then she said she’d send me a “sample” if I paid shipping!
ummm NO!
What’s $3-20 for a PR firm to pay a blogger if they don’t want to send actual product…that’s drops in a bucket to them.
I knew you and Chris have had your fair share (and then some) of the same type of situations and today was breaking point for me…I had to blog it!
and now, I’m getting back to my legitimate reviews & giveaways to get up here! 🙂
Always amazes me when anyone thinks they can come back at me on how I run my business. If they have the time to email debate then obviously there aren’t as many places out there doing it for free anymore. Or they would just move on. Which is about time! Or more than likely it’s their guilty conscience making them defensive as we know they are trying to scam something for nothing.
Wow! I just started up my first review blog this month…hope I don’t have to deal with this for a while! How inconsiderate 🙁
Samantha, as you get bigger you probably will…that along with people ‘stealing’ your pictures, etc. too….par for the course with some bloggers who lack integrity and ability to actually do the work themselves 🙁
Today my big fat vent has to deal with PR bloggers who are stalking our blog & other blogs and hammering out sponsor requests to all of our sponsors! geesh, such lazy bloggers!