Hmm. I’ve been getting more and more of these requests as time passes. Why pray tell, should I post your materials? At the risk of sounding like a callous money-faced individual, am I:
- …getting any benefit for the work involved?
- …getting compensated in anyway?
- …getting loads of significant and relevant blog traffic from whatever it is you’re asking me to do? (Kahit papaano blog traffic translates to income if you have Google AdSense or something similar to it.)
I have worked my ass off to take my blog to wherever it is now. It’s something I grew from scratch back when I was just writing for myself. One of the reasons why it is what it is now is because I don’t flood it with irrelevant and boring content that even I myself am not interested in.
Can you imagine what it would be like if I accommodated every single one of the pa-post requests? You would have nothing to read except canned PRs, announcements, and whatever. Think about it. It will be like a TV station which shows nothing but commercials. Don’t you zone out when you’re watching something like My Husband’s Lover on TV and a barrage of TVCs suddenly break the momentum? You use this time to go to the bathroom, grab a snack, play a Facebook game, or whatever right? Same banana.
I admit, I do help out some friends every now and then by posting stuff like sale announcements and the like, but it’s also because I find the particular bit of news interesting and I feel my readers would like to know too. Sometimes I accept sponsored advertorials but I only do so for brands I actually like and use. If I don’t like or use the brand no amount of money can make me promote it in any way.
It’s true that most people see blogs as the cheap way to promote or propagate virtually any brand, product, or service. Have you ever tried inquiring how much it would cost to run a print ad or TV ad? Blogs are super super cheap in comparison.
Unfortunately, this opens up the way for a lot of abuse, something along the lines of PRs sending me piles and piles of materials for posting “for my consideration” — MBs of it clogging my Inbox. I used to have this idea that if I was the nice cooperative blogger, next time would be different. They would see and eventually recognize how supportive I am and it might open the door to opportunities. Wrong. It only opens the door to more abuse. More favors. Most of the time, you work for them without really getting anything. You think oh I will be in their good graces and they will invite me to more events. Do the math. Let’s say a shampoo is launched. You live in QC. The launch is at The Fort. You go (gas, parking, time). They give you 3 variants of shampoo which you can easily buy from the supermarket for a lot less than P1,000. How is that worthwhile??? Don’t get me wrong. Although I have cut down, I still attend events… albeit I’ve limited my attendance to events by brands which I really want to support, blog sponsors, and advertisers.
I have been on the Pinoy Blogosphere for almost 4 years. I’ve been the nice cooperative blogger (I still am, sometimes). I passed through the stage when I was super excited whenever I’d get an event invite. I felt important. I felt significant. But it’s not all that, really. I think by now I can say I’ve grown older (obviously lol) and wiser (hopefully lol). I actually stop to do the math now. In everything I do I always ask myself, is whatever it is worthwhile?
TRUTH: You don’t get picked for big projects (blogger peg natin si Chuvaness, whom I respect) because you’re mabait. You get picked because you have the statistics and credibility.
As one of my friends put it, don’t shortchange yourself.
Yun na.
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