I’ve been feeling all advice and knowledge sharing for the past couple of days, what with the new GFC for WordPress hack that I wrote. So last night’s discussion with the lovely Jessica from Star Violet Beauty about disclosing payment rates for sponsored posts really inspired me to share my own thoughts. Maybe they’ll help one or the other blogger. I’m by no means an expert on this, but it’s been working for me so far.

So here are my two pennies.

Assess your Blog

You need to know your blog and how it compares to other blogs. Like if you are a UK beauty blogger, have a look at the size of following and traffic other bloggers, small and big, so you can figure out where you are. This is of course guesstimation work more than anything, but SEOmoz for example lets you compare some SEO stats of up to 5 websites at a time. Of course you also need to know what your own website does – Google Analytics for this is great.

Also figuring out the “market” that you are in. I know it’s such a business-y term, but basically what I mean is for you to figure out who else writes about the same topics as you. As a girl blogger, regardless of whether the main topics are fashion, beauty or lifestyle, there’s many, many blogs out there. if you’re a girl and you write about tech / geek stuff, you’re a rarity. If you’re a male blogger, you’re lucky if you write about fashion, beauty or lifestyle ’cause there aren’t many of you. If you’re a guy blogging about technology, etc.. You get the idea.

Set A Price

This is by no means an easy task, but here’s some advice to always keep in mind: Companies approach you for articles, that means they want something from you. And more from you than the gazillion other bloggers.

Remember that, but of course don’t be arrogant either. But them coming to you for sponsored posts, which normally have SEO purposes, means that your website can contribute to some extent to their SEO performance. The better the blogs that link to them, the higher they in turn show up in the search engines. So clearly when they approach you, they think you’re one of the better blogs and that you can contribute to their SEO performance.

Maybe also thinking about what you normally get in PR samples, if you get any, might help. Think of what the products you get retail at and take the average. Being sent products for review purposes is ultimately an alternative way of paying for advertisement by these companies. That’s how they justify the costs to send out products.
So pick a price for a start, best to start with maybe £10-20.

Negotiate Confidently

This is of course the trickiest part of them all and sometimes it can be a massive pain in the ass. But it’s part of capitalism. 2 marketing directors in 2 different companies doing the same things don’t necessarily get paid the same money, because they negotiate and whatnot.

Here’s where the remembering that the company came to you comes in. They came to you. So if they try to dictate a price – push back (unless it’s more than what you would ask for of course, haha). Your blog, your rules after all. A lot of companies try to trick bloggers into disregarding their worth, or that they are doing us bloggers a favour. No, no, no. They come to you, they want something from you.

So when they email you and try to dictate a price make it obvious that you know your stuff, that you know they’re coming for SEO/advertisement purposes and that you normally set the fee of x, but that you’re happy to negotiate.

If more often than not your price gets rejected, then lower it. If it gets accepted more often than not, then maybe raise it and see what happens. Your blog grows (hopefully) in readership and traffic and as such your fees can reflect that.

Or try different amounts for different companies. Think about the company’s potential advertisement amounts. You will eventually find a good fee point and then take it from there.

Also, a lot of times companies themselves still don’t quite know what to pay for sponsored posts, as SEO marketing is relatively new in the great realm of marketing.

Special Tip

From my experience and from talking to other big and small UK beauty and fashion bloggers, I think there seems to be some kind of rule of thumb of what people charge / get paid. Mind you I haven’t spoken to millions of bloggers, so I guess this has to be treated with caution.

Blogs with 20k+ unique visitors per month – £50+ per post.
Blogs with 0k-20k unique visitors per month – £10-50 per post.

Please don’t shoot me when you try to charge this amount because of your stats and you get rejected. Treat this with caution. Especially if you’re not a UK beauty & fashion blogger as that’s the only people I know in terms of this. As I said, start cautiously and see where rejection/acceptance/negotiations take you.

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I know this is still all a bit vague, but I hope this helps a little bit. Let me know your thoughts!! Good luck!!

PS: In the UK there’s ASA guidelines that force bloggers to declare sponsored posts as such, so make sure you do it xx