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?
I started a local blogging group and this issue was discussed. One member accepted a pittance for her weekly column for a HUGE brand in the hopes she would be rewarded down the road. Cynical me told her I thought all she was doing was solidifying that she would work for free, nothing more.
Even brands that will pay often lowball. I was offered a fee for a sponsored post that was simply not enough for the work involved; when I inquired whether they had room in the budget to pay more, they doubled the offer. Good for me right? But not everyone will ask so there are still plenty of people doing work for less than they should…all to often with those ‘hopes’ for the future.
Here is my hope for the future. No one will work for free; every blogger will find a mantra that empowers them to say no; that they will all expect to earn what they are worth. My blog is a personal extension of my life and it’s important to me to share what I do and I’ll do a bazillioin posts without any compensation in that vein. But if a big company wants me to focus on them; well then, let’s focus on what that will cost. Period. Simple enough right?
That’s very true – if you respond that an offer is low, it’s surprising what they’ll offer instead. But some people will insist on grabbing crumbs…..
Well said Sarah. Here here! It’s seems to be an almost daily occurrence now. I had three of these emails today. No we can’t pay, but still want your work. *sigh* Hopefully changes will come soon. Bloggers are more aware now of their worth and the worth of their time.
Thanks Jac – I can get that coverage on our own sites isn’t something to be paid hard cash for (unless they want to guarantee content within it or a publication date), I get that being compensated with product can work for some people too. I have blogged stuff in return for gadgets or vouchers.
But what I object to is this assumption that bloggers would welcome their material being published elsewhere for commercial purposes when the person pasting the material into the backend of the brand’s content management system is being paid to click “publish” but the person who slogged over creating the content did so without payment.
If anyone wants to blog lots of recipes about one product after receiving £5 worth of product – I did so myself recently with the quark desserts – then that’s their business. Creating content for our own sites whilst enjoying ourselves is what this lark is all about. But if that quark brand had said to me they loved my recipes so much they wanted to republish them on their own website, my response would have been sure, but you’ll have to buy it from me.
Just because you wrote something ages ago for free doesn’t mean it has no financial value later on – our sites are a portfolio of material which if brands want to plunder they should be prepared to pay the market rate to use it.
An alternative way brands might benefit from our material at no cost that does us a small kind of favour would be to share our blogs’ facebook posts about their product on their brand’s facebook page. When a big Facebook page shares facebook posts from a smaller site’s facebook page, that smaller site’s facebook stats benefit from a big boost to the “talking about” score. (But it’s only temporary, 2-3 days tops, and doesn’t guarantee those squillions of readers actually liking the smaller facebook page.)
And yet, much of the time, brands are oddly unwilling to do this. Brands sharing our blogs’ pages on their social media accounts, is something they’re often surprisingly reluctant to do. Yet they assume we’ll do it about them all the time. There are exceptions of course but there’s a definite disparity between how much brands promote bloggers compared to how much bloggers promote brands.
Excellent post, Sarah! Please, new bloggers (and some established ones as well), don’t fall for the old “exposure” chestnut! No amount of exposure will pay the mortgage or put food on the table. It’s sort of like the woman with low self-esteem who falls for any man who tells her she’s pretty!
Heh Jean, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head that people are more motivated to do something if it makes them feel liked. I’m not sure how much being “liked” is worth if they’re paying everybody in the chain except you?
This is really interesting, thank you for writing about it Sarah. My blog’s quite new and one thing I find hard is knowing how much to charge brands. Do you know if there’s a guide anywhere for that?
I’d consider how long something was going to take and aim for £15-20 per hour. This isn’t an unreasonable figure to ask for.
I could not agree more! Very well said, I also share the same frustrations as you and Helen. Your comment about our sites being a portfolio of work is exactly right. Our blogs evolve as we learn new skills and improve our writing and photography. We all have fun, enjoy what we do and are good at it but spent time and money on our posts – in terms of ingredients, power/gas, props, etc. Should brands want our content they should pay, if they don’t have the budget to pay for content I don’t have the budget to work for free either.
Thanks Michelle – it’s a slippery slope if blogs start letting brands “mine” their archives for free content.