I seem to see a lot of blog posts that I assumed are sponsored of guides on 'how to' and 'top tips for....'
'How to pack for holidays'
'Things to do at an airport with kids'
'Pet foods and accessories'
'Home renovations'
I don't have a problem with people writing these posts, although, seriously? just how many guides are there to packing and entertaining kids? I'm guilty of that in the past. Writing posts about experiences in the hope of helping others, but they were relevant to my blog and what I was actually doing.
I regularly receive emails from companies asking me to add a link to a post, publish their written article, or write a post, mention on social media and tag them.
Often the fee for this is £10 - £25 and if you blog you'll know how long it takes to write a post, it's just not worth the money to me. I appreciate for others that any amount can make a huge difference to their income.
A few years ago some bloggers said that these posts undermined the real value of blogging and brought the prices down for others, but there are so many blogs out there, so many accounts on social media to reach so many more people than when blogging and social media started.
The thing though that irritates me the most are the posts written by people who don't actually have kids, aren't having home renovations done, have pets or even go away that write about these topics. It doesn't fit with their blog, usually fashion or baking, but they pop in posts about dog leads and cat food or write about home renovations when they're not having any done, including links to companies that they can't actually vouch for.
I know there are lots of other things I should worry about and I do, but they're for other posts.
I'll never take a recommendation from something I've read online without doing further research. I mean we've recently had a new kitchen and I was approached by a PR company to include a link to a building website I had no experience of and another from a company asking me to tag their kitchens, I didn't buy my kitchen from them, so how could I possible comment? Besides they both were only offering £25 for each post.
