I may mutter and roll eyes at my inbox regularly but taking to my keyboard to complain I should probably do more often.
Twice in the past 24 hours commercial brands have asked to republish my content (recipes and prose) within their Facebook apps. Both claim they have “no budget” for these projects.
We have “no budget”
Brands often tell bloggers they have “no budget”. But brands invest heavily in their Facebook presence. They have a budget, they’re just being picky who they spend it on. Facebook is a difficult platform for brands to get traction on and even smaller brands are likely to have budget to accommodate this. Big fat brands on the other hand? No way do they not have budget for Facebook.
Now I have a line in my personal blogging sand. If a brand wants to give me samples of their product in the hope I’ll promote it on my own platform that’s one thing. Assuming the product is relevant to my audience and/or the brand makes it worth my while I am often happy to do this.
But say the same brand wants me to provide creative material to publish on their own platforms – their website, their publicity materials, their email newsletters, their Facebook apps, whatever. My bottom line is if a commercial company wants to use my material on their stuff or to benefit them, they have to pay me*.
Everyone else is being paid…
The reason I’m annoyed here is that everyone else in this commercial project is getting paid. The software developer creating the Facebook app gets paid. The agency looking after the brand’s communications is paid (a hefty sum covering several peoples’ salaries). And in this case, the person curating the content for the brand’s Facebook app is getting paid. So doesn’t the person actually creating the pretty content that folk are reading deserve to get paid too?
I have the same view of any third party publisher who wants to publish my material without paying a decent fee for it. Why should I spend 5-6 hours creating engaging content when the person spending 10 minutes copying and pasting it into the back end of the other website gets paid but I don’t??
And what I’m going to say may sound harsh. If you are someone who persists in doing stuff for brands for free or extremely low compensation, you’re undercutting the market for everyone else. “It’s the amateurs who make it tough for professionals” as Harlan Ellison so eloquently expressed in this viral YouTube video I’ve embedded below.
I’ve not reached this conclusion the easy way. On occasion, it’s dawned on me half way through projects that whereas everyone else on the team was getting a salary or a daily freelance fee for their contribution, I was the one trying to catch a few fish biscuits.
…So why am I the only one not being paid?
A few years ago, I gave up an entire Sunday to “work with” a particular supermarket on a Christmas publicity exercise. I’d agreed to spend a day working in their premises, for their benefit and didn’t agree a fee for my time. Stupid eh? During the day it occured to me the foodie celebrity drafted in for the same event regularly benefited from paid commissions in their magazine, the magazine editor was obviously on a sizeable salary meriting working out of hours and the two home economists were definitely on a paid fee that justified them working all day on a weekend.
What did I get for donating my precious weekend family time to this multi million pound company? Not even a sodding DIY Christmas cake kit. Thus I resolved that if I were ever asked again to contribute to a commercial project where everyone else taking part was on a pay roll that I would not work without there being a tangible benefit to myself.
Not everyone has had their fish biscuit awakening.
There will be bloggers flattered by big companies who take the bait how being “featured” will bring blog traffic – which incidently, (even if you are displaying monetised ads or selling e-books etc etc) is never going to come close to converting into the market rate for your work.
Don’t fall for the “exposure” pitch
Exposure doesn’t pay the bills. Next time a PR says you’ll get lots of exposure why not point out to them that being promoted on social media instead of being paid is like their boss offering to recommend them on LinkedIn instead of getting a salary. Sure you’ll get lots of “exposure” – to other brands who see you as a sucker who’ll do stuff for free. Why would they pay you either?
Here is a wonderful post that spells out why bloggers should be paid for their work.
And you might have seen this video before but it’s the last word on paying for creative work. Watch this video and you’ll NEVER AGREE TO WORK FOR FREE AGAIN.
*Preferably money although on occasion I’ll trade my time for gift vouchers or gadgets. But never fish biscuits.
Would you give away your work to commercial brands?
Fabulous post. The exposure thing makes me laugh. “Oh we’ll RT you”, well guess what? I have far more followers than they do in the first place. Never have I got decent hits back from anything I’ve been linked to online to make it worth while.
Thanks Jules – I think the average number of hits from a Facebook app is about 10 if that. The only time I ever had a decent spike from a brand’s Facebook page was about 200 visitors from Peggy Porschen’s Facebook page and she has around 60k+ highly engaged followers. But it’s only ever a brief spike if anything at all, it’s not a reason to work for free.
Hi Sara.. that is a very insightful post and i agree with everything you say.
When i preached about it recently to a food blogger, she said she didnt mind brands using content or pics or anything from her blog as long as she gets credit for it. I thought about it and realised that initially i did the same too. I was excited when a brand wanted to use my pics on their website for a mere mention of my blog. i have no experience or background in photography and i realised i could slowly build up my portfolio this way. My question is, how do amateurs deal with this?
Please dont take this the wrong way, but i just had to ask someone and since you did a post on the same, i thought id clear it with you .
Hi Nisha, virtually every blogger goes through a phase where they’re flattered by brands to be approached and don’t realise they’re doing work which should be paid for. The first time I was contacted by a PR I gave them four recipes to publish on their facebook app in return for £25 voucher and a box full of junk. And I published three posts and ran a giveaway.
In return I got 16 page views from their Facebook page. Way to go!
Since then I’ve worked on some great projects for which the brands compensated me well. But sadly a far greater proportion think that bloggers are a cheap resource of endless free content to be mined for commercial purposes.
It’s natural to feel unsure about your material’s commercial worth at first but once you’ve got 2-3 excellent examples that display what you’re capable of you shouldn’t be afraid to charge. If you don’t have faith your work is worth paying for, no one will ever pay you for it.
I completely agree with this!
I sit on both sides of the blogger | PR side of things and would never dream of asking someone to *give* their content away for free, and would certainly not give any of mind to agencies or brands either (not that anyone is likely to ask 😉 )
I’m also really shocked that you never got paid for the full day you spent with the supermarket! That’s really disgusting behaviour on their part. You wouldn’t expect a journalist to do it for free so why do brands think that it’s OK to ask bloggers to be paid nothing? The beauty of blogs is that you have the freedom to write as and when you see fit. Most bloggers are far better writers than the “press” because of this, but brands feel as if their time is worth less or that they are doing it to occupy a couple of hours and that it isn’t a serious commitment.
OK rant over. Great post Sarah!
It was a wake up call. I left the venue seething. Never again!
I had a super big brand ask to use one of my pictures on their website with a link to my site. I said okay. Then they sent me a release that said I was giving up all right to the picture and couldn’t use it any more and they could use it where ever and how ever they wanted. I told them they’d have to pay me for the picture if I was giving up all rights to it. They wrote back a short snippy note and said they’d just use someone else’s picture then. So rude!
It’s extremely rude Barbara and I think illustrative of the lack of value commercial brands have towards creative content overall and not just bloggers. A lot of companies seem to think that just because you’ve done something already you’ll let them have it for free.
Very well said Sarah – you know I share many of the same frustrations.
I regularly link to that excellent article on Decor8 – it says it all so well, especially where it points out that not working for free is supporting the whole community.
When a brand wants to use my content and claims not to have the budget I offer the compromise of letting them use one image and a brief extract and to link to me for the full content. Sadly few seem interested and move on to the next person who will fall for the exposure mantra.
It is the same with asking your followers to follow and like brands for competition entries – digital agencies charge vast amounts to do this – why on earth would I do this for free when I know that I and other bloggers can charge for it?
I hope there is a change coming – more and more brands are finding budget for bloggers – either to produce content for them, or to feature content on their sites. I hope that as a community we can all work towards a fair reward and the respect for our work.
I wish I could share your optimism that brands would find more budget for bloggers. I think it’s more likely the case that they realise more and more they can get away with not paying professionals to create stuff as they can cobble stuff together from the public and bloggers for free/very little.
The thing I find weird is that some brands pay £100 upwards, £200 isn’t unknown. I appreciate that newer sites think noone will ever pay them anything because they’ve only just started out. Newer bloggers should be aware that it’s precisely because their audience is smaller that brands think you’ll be game to work for them for free or virtually nothing.
And if you’re giving them free content for their site, it saves them just as much money whatever size your audience is so actually the “noone’s going to pay me unless I’m some big shot” really doesn’t wash at all. Good content is worth paying for – whoever created it.