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Wednesday, March 11, 2015

The Blogging Break-Up


I love sponsoring other blogs. I think it's a great way to get yourself out there and to have someone promoting you even when you forget to do it yourself.  And my favorite bloggers to sponsor actively read and comment on your posts so you feel like you have your own personal blogging cheerleader.

This is all fabulous but then it just stops. It seriously feels like a blogging breakup. I'll look forward to your daily comments then in the blink of the eye you no longer comment, you no longer sing me praises on twitter, you're just gone. I know I only paid for 30 days of this treatment but it kind of gets my brain churning. Was it disingenuous? Did you really think that post was that great or were you grasping at straws to to find something appropriate to promote?

Many of the bloggers I have sponsored will still come and comment once in a while and it makes me feel good to think they still on occasion check out what I've been up to. This makes me feel as if their promotion was a bit more genuine. They must have liked me because they still read my blog. But on a few occasions I have had someone comment on every single post and then they never return after sponsorship ends and then I feel as if I've been played. I feel like it was all a lie.

Now are they bad bloggers because of this? No. You paid for a service and got what you asked for but something just doesn't sit right with me, especially if I am an active reader and comment"er" of this blog even after my sponsorship is over. I feel like maybe you could drop a comment a month or something of the sort.

I know it is a business and it may sound as if I am taking this too personal but blogging is personal. Someone reads all your thoughts and has active conversations with you about it but then when your paid time is up they're gone. I don't like it.

Will I stop sponsoring blogs? No way. I love it and it gets me a lot of traffic but this whole strange world of bloggers sponsoring other bloggers will continue to pick at my brain. So I am dying to know what are your thoughts on this subject? Am I taking this way to personal and should just view it as a business transaction or have others taken the sponsorship breakup hard?

19 comments:

  1. I'm a fairly new blogger and this is something I've thought of lots. It always seems weird to me when you sponsor a blogger and they don't follow you on any social media or even comment (often bigger blogs) that makes me not want to spend my hard earned money on you. As for the bloggers who are good at social media mentions and blog comments it's nice and it really does help grow your readership, but you do feel lost afterwards. I think I've tried really hard to keep up comments and social media interactions with them so there's mutual benefits after the sponsorship is over. I know we only pay for a certain amount of days, but the sponsorships that feel more genuine are the ones I'll continue to support for ads.

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    1. Agree, agree, agree! I was quite angry when I realized that one blogger I sponsored a few times was never following me on any social media platform and never commented on one post and I paid a decent amount. And I as well, will comment on blogs I'm sponsoring even after it ends and I end up sponsoring those who reciprocate over and over.

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  2. I totally feel that way too! I know that for a while, because of personal things going on, I wasn't able to comment back on the blogs I read as much as I wanted and I think some people only will comment if you comment too.

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  3. I totally know what you mean! There's one somewhat popular blog that I sponsored and got a lot of attention for the month. And then nothing. And when I went into the Passionfruit site to check out how my ad had performed, the click count was not very high. I came to the conclusion that she was the only one clicking on my ad to inflate the click count so that it looked like it was performing better than it really was.

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  4. Gosh I love this! This has been on my mind for so long... I know it's difficult to read a ton of blogs, but it means so much to me if they continue to communicate with me after the paid sponsorship is over. And if they continually promote me by saying they love my blog and then stop reading, it makes me feel like it was a lie.

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  5. I have felt the same way for a while, but as someone who runs a sponsorship program, it is HARD to read blogs consistently! I always follow the people I work with on Bloglovin' so that I see their posts ESPECIALLY if I really like their content- but usually I won't accept a sponsor in the first place unless I like their comment. It's really difficult to find a healthy balance and I'm still working on it myself.

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    1. I completely get that it is super hard to keep up to date on a lot of blogs so I do understand the other side on this that's what makes the whole thing hard. We all need more time in the day. Haha!

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  6. This strikes a chord with me because I often feel that this is what I end up doing. Offering sponsorships is definitely a commitment and one that I try to take seriously. It means reading, commenting, and promoting sometimes 10-12 blogs a day, writing and editing my own posts, and responding to comments on my own blog. Not to mention working and spending time with family. So I end up following all of my blogs that I enjoy reading and read them on the sly on my phone at work on Bloglovin' and often end up not commenting or catching up on the weekends with blogs. It's hard to try to get everything in. I am so glad you posted this bc it's a great reminder that even though the sponsorship has ended, comments and interaction do not have to. I'm sorry!

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    1. First off, no need for you to be sorry. You blog is hands down one the BEST blogs to sponsor. And on the flip side of the coin I totally understand where you are coming from. Since your blog is so great to sponsor you must be exposed to so many blogs and it is hard to keep track and comment on them all especially when sponsorship is over even though you do a good job at it. ;) So I do understand. It's a hard balance.

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    2. Anne- you totally took the words out of my mouth. I was going to say that there are some days I don't have time to read any other blogs except for my sponsor's posts - writing, editing, responding to comments, spending time with my hubby and friends - it's so much! As it is I've decided to go from my 5-6 posts/week down to 3-4/week because I just can't do it all. BUT BUT BUT- I would feel SO terrible if any one of my sponsors felt this way after sponsoring me! These days it's easier for me to keep in touch with *everyone* via social media, but when I do have time I go through Bloglovin and try to catch up on everyone's blogs! XO!

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  7. Honestly, I know that I am guilty of this sometimes, but I can explain it pretty easily. I keep my sponsors in a "favorites" folders on my Google Chrome account so that I can check for posts in order to give them social media love. So everyday I am at their blog, and I comment most of the time, too. When their spot is up, I remove them from the folder so then it's just back to the normal Bloglovin' reading system...and sometimes I miss their posts due to when they post vs. when I read, or whatever. That's one explanation, but I will say that I do try to continue giving tons of love to my old sponsors!

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  8. I'm pretty new at blogging and did not even know you could pay someone to comment on your posts! AMAZING!

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  9. I always compare it to a real business and I expect business owners to recognize and remember me if I am a regular. I understand that a sponsorship is a 30 day contract but like you I find it sad that they stop commenting afterwards and then I find I usually lose interest in them if they never acknowledge me because after all this is about building relations right??

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  10. I've been blogging for going on 6 years and have never paid for sponsorship. I won a few here and there and that's it. I get it. Blogging is about numbers and traffic and that's why this all came about in the first place but it never did sit very well with me among many other promotional blog world things. Like giveaways. I have not evolved very well in this money and numbers driven blog world!!! I didn't jump on a lot of those things so I know that's part of why I will never be a big blog. You basically bought attention and promotion. It is a business deal. It's fake. I understand that it's kind of sad though when it happens.

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  11. It is interesting to get input from both sides of this. Me personally, I know I could never offer sponsorships at this point because I have weeks where I completely neglect my own blog and I would feel absolutely awful if someone were paying me to promote them. It is hard work to keep up a blog and work full time on top of it. I think the thing that gets me most upset is when I pay for a sponsorship and that blogger becomes MIA and never comments or promotes me and then sends you a quick thanks at the end and runs off never to be heard of again.That's the thing that really gets me.

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  12. I can definitely see both sides of this too. I think sometimes a blog just doesn't click as much, but that doesn't mean the support they gave you while you were sponsoring them disingenuous. If someone sponsors you but you don't really "click" with them or find their content interesting, it's hard to keep following up long after the sponsorship because you have current sponsors and other blogs you're constantly following. Especially if you're a blog that gets a lot of sponsors, if you kept every sponsor forever you'd very soon have hundreds of blogs you couldn't keep up with...

    But I get it. When blogs stop sponsoring me I try not to disappear, I keep them in my reader, but I get overwhelmed and can't always take the time to stop and say something. Though I try. :) Maybe it's something we all need to try and work on more often-life and time sometimes restricts a lot of it. But I try to keep up with the people who are reading and commenting me. When I have the time to stop and read a blog I go through this routine:

    1. Sponsors
    2. Favorites
    3. People who commented/visited me recently
    4. The rest of my feeds I follow

    Sometimes I don't get to 3 and 4, and when I'm consistently not getting to 3 and 4 is when I realize it's time to clean out my reader.

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  13. LOVE this post so much! I took a break from sponsoring blogs in the fall (so I haven't grown my blog lately as much as I want too) because I got burnt by sooo many different bloggers I was sponsoring. The ad spots I purchased promised twitter shoutouts, guest posts, etc and I didn't get a single thing that was promised with the ad. There were a couple that didn't even put my button up! Once I'm over my self imposed spending freeze I'm going to slowly get back into it and I'm just hoping I don't have that bad luck again

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