Many readers ask how and where I get stuff to try out and give away on my site. To be honest I am not sure how it started, one day I received an email from someone asking if I would review their product and it kind of went from there. In the beginning I wasn’t sure what the “rules” were so I made some mistakes, but I did some things right. Here are a few of my thoughts regarding advertising, product reviews, and the whole getting stuff for free aspect of blogging.
- Create a disclosure page. This was something I learned about only recently while attending Blissdom. A disclosure page lets readers and potential advertisers know where you stand with advertising on your blog. You don’t even have to make one up yourself, there is a handy little tool on the web that will create on for you, just fill in the blanks.
- Stay true to your brand. Your readers trust you and your opinions. Don’t accept free items or write product reviews for things that are contrary to what you and your site stand for.
- Communicate with the advertiser. What happens if you get a product and it doesn’t perform to your standards? Before you write a scathing review talk to the advertiser, communication is always a good thing.
- Be clear about what you expect from the advertiser and what they can expect from you. Do you charge for reviews? Is the item yours to keep? Is there one to giveaway? Getting your expectations stated clearly from the beginning is important. I prefer to communicate via email, so there is a record of what is expected from each party.
- Be honest about your stats. Advertisers can check this out anyway, so there is no point to inflating your numbers. If your site does not have a lot of traffic, perhaps there are other marketing aspects you can focus on. Maybe you have 5,000 followers on Twitter, or a very active Facebook account. Perhaps your readership is small, but loyal. Maybe you have a lot of influence in your local area. Having a high traffic site is not the only way to gain the attention of advertisers.
- If you like a product contact the company to see if you can help them promote it. For example, if you love a certain brand of clothing or cleaner try contacting the company to see if they would be willing to give you some products to keep and give away.
- If you are promoting a product, do it wholeheartedly. There are many ways to promote a product or run a giveaway. Try to use various forms of social media to let people know about your contest or product. Use Twitter, Facebook, and contest memes to spread the word about your promotion.
- Content is still king. I will always believe that the key to a successful site is good content. Blog regularly and develop relationships with your readers. They will trust you and be willing to try things you recommend. If you are always promoting the latest fad and nothing else, you will have nothing but an online infomercial.
What are your “rules” for promoting products on your blog? What do you think about blog that heavily promote products? Do you visit blogs that have frequent giveaways and do you enter? Share your thoughts.
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Thanks for the great info. It’s nice of you to put so many blogging tips out there. I’ve saved a few from you already.
Great info. I’m just learning how to blog and have been wondering how all the give-aways & advertising works.
Its cool to see how many giveaways are out there. But I find that on the sites that do giveaways, there’s always so many people signing up for them that I dont have a chance to actually win one.
I have participated in a couple of giveaways. It’s fun…, well I won one, but I have yet to come across a blog that “heavily” promotes products. My rules? I’ll think about it when I get that first e-mail.
Thanks for this great info! My blog is brand new, and I do have AdSense on it, but I am seriously considering removing it because many of the advertisements that come up on my blog are contrary to what I believe and what my blog supports. Because I talk about Dave Ramsey and reducing debt, I get all kinds of those phony debt consolidation and reduce your credit card debt by 60% type ads. There are so many, and I am starting to get tired of trying to block all of them.
Hmmmm…how do you get started?
Thanks for sharing your tips! I am always amazed at how many giveaways some have and I wonder if the mailman is like Santa everyday!
I have never been contacted by a company to review their products. My blog is too small. lol
I don’t care for blogs that promote lots of products. I feel like they are trying to sell too much.
I have entered some contest for give aways, but not many.
This was an interesting post.
Great suggestions! Thanks for sharing!
~Liz
Thanks for all the great tips. This is really helpful!
These are some great tips. Thanks!
Thanks for the rules and tips, I would enjoy getting into this aspect of blogging.
I’ve also added a disclosure policy since Blissdom.
Those emails are just starting to come to my inbox.
As far as content- I try to post something else on the same day I post a review.
Thank you for the useful information. I just attended a press event for the first time last week and am beginning to do product reviews. This really helps me!
As I created my blog to be a reminder of the blessing in my life and a way to share information with others, advertising is does not fit into the purpose of my blog. I choose not to promote products on my blog as a form of advertising. However, if there is a product or service that I believe in or think that it will help people to live a frugal life, I will post about it – but it won’t be an ad (as in the company will have no knowledge that I am writing about their product and I will not receive any form of compensation for doing so).
I have stopped reading blogs that heavily promote products. My time is limited, and I don’t want to spend it reading ads for products.
I enjoy a give-away, but don’t go searching them out. I would love to do a give-away on my blog, but again, not in order to be compensated, but to share with others. (Okay, that makes it a bit of a gray area, doesn’t it?) But, I don’t plan on giving-away items to promote a company or a product. I would only do so to share an item.
Thanks for the info … There is so much to learn about blogging!
Oh this is so timely! Thanks so much. I really could use the tips!!
Speaking of Giveaways – I have a Beatiful Life Management System giveaway this week (it’s a Christian Planner). Be sure to come by and check it out! Is it bad taste to mention that here??
I would not read a blog that only promoted products as that would be like watching only commercials all day. However, I don’t mind an occasional review of a product as it’s nice to know what someone really thinks about it.
I don’t have ads on my blog, and have never been contacted to promote a product. However, I was contacted to do a giveaway.
I have entered and won giveaways, but I don’t enter them very often.
I don’t have any suggestions… I consider myself a new blogger still… but I wanted to say thank you for your post. I have learned so much from your “blogging” instruction!
Thanks for this post. It is very timely. I just recently started receiving those emails. I have received a couple of item and recently posted my first review. I just received an email about another product that is being sent my way. So, thank you, thank you. I needed to read this.
I just started my blog recently, so I am rather new to the promotion/product review aspect of blogging. I actually just did my first product review today. I have a self-governed policy to not product-push on my readers, but when given the chance to review a product that is of interest to me, and possibly to my readers, I see no harm in posting a blog about my opinion of the product.
I do love giveaways on blogs (though I have yet to win one). I don’t, however, like blogs that try to sell you on a product – I’m probably not going to subscribe to any blogs that product-push on a regular basis. But that said, an honest review of a product is always welcome – unless that’s the entire content of a blog. In that case, I probably won’t stick around too long – just bookmark it for future reference.
Thanks for this post – it helps me to have a better grasp on how product reviews and giveaways work for once I get my blogging feet firmly planted!