Are You a Product Patsy?
Are you a product patsy? Would you let business piggy-back on your blog traffic just because they give you free stuff? That is the debate for bloggers everywhere. It's a hotter topic for Green Bloggers - are they enabling the problem of over-consumption or helping the market move to a higher, greener economy? Are they giving their "trusted opinion" away, or are they being paid to endorse a product? As a reader, how will you know you're getting the straight scoop?
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The holy grail of modern consumer marketing is when a company can get a blogger with a large audience to endorse their goods and services, either by a review or posting them for sale on their sites.
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If you like the product, you'll be providing them with permanent, positive promotion for the life of your blog. That's better than the yellow pages which garners $100/month for the smallest of ads. What's your time worth? What's your reputation worth? To newbie bloggers, this is a very exciting offer, a big company selected them to be "an ambassador" - I don't think so... you're not an ambassador, you're a patsy.
Patsy's allow themselves to be used because they don't know any better. If you're going down that path to include product endorsements, do so with some standards in mind and I hope one of those standards is to not be paid for reviews, but do get paid for advertising (and only if you believe in the product). I also hope that you have a green standard that includes no Pervasive Organic Pollutants.
You spent a long time and countless hours building a readership and a point of view, you shouldn't be giving it away. And by all means make sure that when you do promote something, you do it because it's in line with your Green mission and values. Women trust women because we expect an honest opinion from each other.
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