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Hi Guys!

As a blogger I receive loads of emails every day, everyone and their dog wants to improve my site and my SEO, CONSTANTLY and I frequently have people wanting to send me millions of dollars because I won some faraway countries lottery. They just need my full name and bank account details… Anyway, another type of email I often receive is people wanting a guest post for their own sites or blogs. Now I’m well up for guest posting, it’s great to post on different sites – as long as they’re relevant to my blog and my own interests. I really love working with other beauty bloggers too, wether it’s writing or receiving guest posts.

So let me explain what recently happened. A guy contacted me wanting me to post for his site regularly, it was a beauty site and they had their own blog, I hadn’t heard of them before. The site was not something you’d easily come across. He insisted on speaking to me on Skype which I went along with as it sounded like a great opportunity – paid regular guest posting sounded right up my street! He said he wanted me to write full beauty tutorials – and I thought I was on to a winner! Then when payment came into question he said he would pay me £10 per post. TEN POUNDS. You might think, hey that’s a tenner, great! But think about it – he wants me to plan a beauty look, create said look whilst photographic each stage, write the whole thing up, edit the post and the photos, and include his relevant links, all for £10? I work this out to be about 4 hours of work. For £10. So I will be earning £2.50 an hour. Now my time is precious (I’m not saying yours isn’t by the way) I have a part time job and a family and a house to run. So if I’m going to guest blog I need it to be worth it. For the sake of £10 I’d rather put it on my own site. I told him politely that I would either need more pay or I couldn’t write the post. He replied that other bloggers he worked with were quite happy with the deal, and he had another ‘junior’ blogger who was doing something similar for £5 a post. Arrrrgh!

Now, if I were a new blogger I know my response to this situation would be completely different. It would be more along the lines of –

‘OMG he wants to work with ME!’

‘He wants my writing on HIS site! AND he’s going to pay me!’

I imagine I would be pretty thrilled and would snap the offer up in an instant, not even considering the fact that he would just be using me to get some (pretty much) free content on his blog, with next to no compensation in it for me.

This is where I want to tell you to KNOW YOUR WORTH. If bloggers happily spend hours of their time working for nothing or next to nothing, then these type companies will expect everyone to do the same. It’s important to remember though that guest blogging can be mutually beneficial, and of course you can do it for free. Now I’m going to completely contradict myself here… if a well known / high profile company or brand asked me to do the same, or if it was a brand I loved I would do it for free, or for compensation in products if they were offered to me. But for a small company that I’ve never heard of it just seems crazy to put so much time and effort into a blog post for little or no return.

I understand this is a fairly controversial subject. Some bloggers won’t get out of bed for less than £100 (or more), some will tell you not to write for less than you’d like to be paid per hour, whereas others will happily write completely for free. Everyone has different reasons for doing what they do, and it’s important to remember we all have different personal situations too. Personally though, I think you need to weigh up the pros and cons, and whatever you do, don’t sell yourself short.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this subject?

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