Hey lovelies, you might be a blogger looking to have regular blog collaborations with brands, you might already be actively collaborating with brands. Today I’ll be sharing with you all the reasons you should be DECLINING collaborations, because there are a few reasons that as a blogger you shouldn’t be collaborating with certain brands.
In 2021 I didn’t think I’d still seeing a lot of tweets from fellow bloggers about the absolutely ridiculous things that brands have been asking from them. Including but not limited too, being sent an empty bottle of product to use for a post with no payment, being offered £10 for 10 blog posts or continually being asked to ‘negotiate’ a set price. There are so many that will try and get dodgy blog collaborations out of you.
The Budget Isn’t Appropriate For You
What you charge is your business, but you don’t need to accept under offers, or offers that are insulting to the work you do. You can negotiate the cost of your blogger brand collaboration, and if they say no that’s their loss.
I’ve learnt many things about charging over the years, and in most cases if a brand wants to work with you, they won’t knock down your price. Yes, there are tons of brands out there that will try and offer you £10 for a post or a discount code on a product. As a blogger you genuinely need to respect your work and your blog enough to tell them to do one. Decent collaborations will come around.
Especially during the pandemic, brands might not have a budget to work with you at all. If you want to work on a gifted basis that is your business, but do be mindful to take circumstance into account.
If You Don’t Want To Work With The Brand
As your blog starts to grow you might find that you get emails from all sorts of brands about producing a blog collaboration. This could be on a gifted or paid basis. You might find that the brand isn’t one that you’d necessarily promote if you were buying the products yourself.
You might also find that the brand wants a collaboration you don’t necessarily want to produce. I can’t stress enough how important it is to say no, and to to be honest to your readership. Promoting shite products or producing poor ADs only leads to having a less engaged readership, and people navigating away from your blog or avoiding your new ADs.
I’m not going to lie over the years there are some collaborations I wish I hadn’t produced, especially some in 2017, but I said yes simply for the money and now I’m stuck with them. I’m not ashamed to admit it because I’ve come a really long way with my blog collaborations.
Nowadays I steer clear of brands that I wouldn’t use if they didn’t get in touch, and will politely decline or suggest bloggers who may fit the brand better. Obviously making this distinction is something personal for everyone and based off what you may want from future blog collaborations.
When The Requests Are Ridiculous
We’ve all had those emails where brands want ten Instagram posts, three tweets, two blog posts, the rights to every photo you’ve ever taken, and the rights to your first born child.
Alright that last bit might be an exaggeration, but for the most part requests like this really do happen. The thing is when you’re a new blogger you might now know that you should be charging HUNDREDS of ££s for a request like that. Brands are taking advantage of you and the fact you don’t know you should be declining ridiculous offers.
In 2020 I also noticed a massive influx of emails from brands/blogs asking for free link insertion. This is a ludicrous request, make sure you are telling anyone who emails you and asks for a free link no.
If you’d like a little bit of a giggle at my expense, here are two blog collaboration requests I had recently. One where a large beauty company, emailed me and asked me for my monthly stats, said they were interested in working with me because of my high monthly views, and then offered me the bottles for the product. Yes, empty product bottles to photograph. This is no exaggeration. Or a second collaboration request for sponsored work, where I was emailed and asked my rates for what they wanted. I stated £240. He then asked me to negotiate ‘between £10-40’ as I was being ‘unfair for the work asked’ (I was not).
As I mentioned above what you fee for a collaboration is your business, but I currently work off minimum wage per hour + current stats + what promotion they’d like to determine my fees.
You Have Too Much On Your Plate
There is absolutely nothing with wrong with accepting that actually, as much as you’d like to, you can’t fit any blogger collaborations in right now.
If you can’t deliver something to the level of quality that you’d like to then it’s much easier to say you’ve got too much going on right now. Then let the PR/brand know that you’d be interested in the future blog collaborations but unfortunately you can’t take the work on right now.
Delivering bad/poorly created blog collaborations is not something that you want to do. It is so much better to say no. Christmas content is a really good example of this, it is very easy to take on too much for gift guides or for reviews in the festive season. It’s much better to take on what you can and decline when you know you can’t do the work to best of your ability.
I hope you enjoyed this post, and for a giggle tell me the worst or most insulting request you’ve ever had a for a blog collaboration in the comments. I’ve also recently added a follow me on WordPress button, so it would mean the world to me if you followed my blog!
Totally agree with EVERYTHING in this post, babe! I think it’s important to be selective and only choose niches/brands that fit what you’re doing/where you want to take things! And of course, the budget needs to be acceptable to you too x
I am looking forward to your empty bottle post then chick!! That is actually the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard!
I had one recently, it was fairly well paid given my DA and I would have done it but it was a life insurance company that I had made the mistake of inquiring with a few months earlier. They BUGGED the life out of me, calling from all sorts of numbers, not taking no for an answer etc. So I had to say no, I couldn’t advertise a company that have literally hounded me. It didn’t sit right at all x
Thanks for sharing this! So interesting to read. The empty bottles really had me hahaha
Very informative post! Also there’s so much of scam during collaboration so make sure to be alert and safe.
JENY| https://jenyscloset.wixsite.com/jenyscloset/blog
Great post. I know that saying no can be tough for some bloggers but it is worth it in the end. I’ve actually unfollowed some bloggers because of their content and the way it felt too influenced by paid ads that didn’t fit their brands!
Rosie
This is such a helpful post! When I first started working with brands, I felt like I should accept all the collaborations, but I have since learned to say no to those brands that don’t have an appropriate budget or I’m just too busy.
This is so important for all blogger’s to read this post, it’s more than ok to say no, especially for all of these reasons that you’ve listed here! x
Lucy | http://www.lucymary.co.uk
Thanks for sharing this! It’s always a grey area when it comes to collaboration, but the most important as you said, is to do a great job with products that your reader would appreciate without selling out your work. Some brands don’t understand all that goes behind apparently! Thanks for sharing x
I’ve never had the opportunity to work with a brand but I would love too.
This is so helpful to a newer blogger (like me)! I can’t believe the cheek of some people and what they ask for, but it’s so reassuring to hear that we do have the right to say no, and should actively be doing so! x
I’ve definitely been saying no to collabs lately, and being very selective!
Love, Amie ❤
The Curvaceous Vegan
Good advice and lovely blog!
Oh my gosh the empty bottles story cracked me up 😂 I had one completely random request from a company who wanted to send me an alarm clock! I told them that I wasn’t interested as books are my thing, and definitely not alarm clocks and they were just really insistent. They were asking if they could send it anyway even though I said I wouldn’t review it at all… Seemed really dodgy that they were so pushy.
Such a great post, thank you for sharing. I have a hard time saying “no” overall in my life, not just specific to blogging, so this really hit home for me. 🤗
Thank you for this post, Kayleigh! This year I really want to focus more on collabs so it’s always great to realize when it’s time to decline.
I agree with all of these! I’ve been asked for the absolute earth for a free product or £30/ £40 before and the answer is always no. And I’ve been asked not to disclose more times than I can count…bye x
Sophie
I have not worked with brands yet but I have set it on one of my goals to work with 2 brands this year! I always see stories and people’s tweets about all this and I cannot believe it. I hope that when I do end up working with a brand it will be for the right reasons and the price is right for me. This was a helpful post for me xx
This is such a wonderful post! Such great and important advice lovely! All the best, Amy at amymarshment.com xx
Great post! I get emails regarding adding links all the time. Most of them are not even related to my niche in any way. Last year I added one link for free but the lady never bothered to thank me so I took it out and replaced with my own affiliate link. Also people pushing for sponsored do-follow links or paying with a product get a no from me.
This post is so important! I’ve had so many irrelevant brands get in touch before that haven’t even read my blog and saw what I write about, it’s so annoying. But thank you for highlighting, it’s okay to say no xx
Such a great blog post. At the moment I am still just doing gifted collaborations but it’s amazing what some poeple want you to product in exchange for a product. They make it seem like they are doing you a massive favour by sending you a product and not taking into account how much work goes behind taking photos, editing and writing blog posts.
Steph x
I’m so glad you wrote this. As a newer blogger, companies have asked me to pay for their products and then promote them across all of my accounts. Umm…no. I think some people fall for this is because of imposter syndrome. We all get it sometimes but that’s no reason to let others take advantage of you.
Really useful info. Thanks for sharing. As a new blogger I didn’t know about all of this 🤔
https://uncuaderno4cero.wordpress.com/
Such an important message, kayleigh. We shouldn’t feel swept away under the presence that a brand wants to collaborate if we don’t feel the product is right. Had a brand who wanted a few social posts. I quoted £20 for my time and having no real followers at the time. He said he wanted to pay £10. I agreed and never heard from him again! I find the usd exchange can sting sometimes. I’ve turned jobs down because it wasn’t worth my time.
Really well thought out post! I’ve definitely had a few I’ve had to decline for a number of reasons. Sometimes you have to have faith in yourself, know your worth and only promote things you’re 100% happy with!