With free laptops being thrown at my feet I’ve been thinking about a form of professional blogging that maybe shouldn’t even be called professional since no money changes hands. It’s more accurately described as blogging for freebies.
Finding advertisers for your blog is easy if you keep your audience in mind and accept the fact that all the affiliate programs you read about from Chow, Rowse, Shoemoney (or whatever his name is) and their pan handling ilk won’t make any money for anyone but them in the form of referral fees. Google ads, Yahoo ads, and any other sort of contextual junk simply won’t work unless you have colossal levels of traffic or have a target income level of around one dollar per year.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could be rewarded for your blogging efforts with zero advertising? Well, you can, and it’s a lot easier than you think.
Companies, it would seem, are more than happy to provide freebies to bloggers in niches that are relevant to them and the products they are pushing.
Want to get sent free video games? Start a blog about video games. Fancy some free clothes? Start a blog about fashion.
Sounds too good to be true but it is absolutely possible if your blog attracts a reasonable following and your writing shows honesty and integrity. Just remember that nobody likes a shill, call things honestly and be true to yourself.
And before you think that the freebies will only be of low value and not worth bothering with consider that you will be judged not by the size of your wallet, but by the size of your reader’s wallet. If you are a popular authority on music with you will be sent free music. You can guess the rest. If you want to make a splash in the blogging for freebies arena remember the golden rule.
Aim high.
This is quite true in the mommy-blogging niche. Parents are havign all kinds of goodies tossed at them in exchange for blogging about it.
You’re better off just using affiliate programs to promote those products. You will receive cold hard cash and probably earn even more than the value of the item you promoted.
It’s totally possible, and all depends on your goals and how you approach people.
I have a friend who runs a blog in the book review niche and he gets free books about 2-3 times a month, press passes for book signings and events, etc… for FREE.
Hey, theres a great ebook topic! Bloging for freebies.
yes, sure, but who believes you when they know you’re given all that stuff. it is like those free magazines that get filled by the advertisers. no reference at all. but hey.. you might get a house full of stuff. next to that, you’re very likely to be treated as a journalist, who, these days, have to give back everything.
and frankly speaking: they’re right. it will result in more reliable articles.
Yes of course it is possible. You just need many, many readers that are interested in those products. But it takes a lot of time to create a blog that those companies are interested in. I suggest you just keep focusing on your niche and if you are lucky like you, you might get such an opportunity once in a while!
Hmmm. I’ve been blogging about management consultancy, amongst other things. Does this mean that I could get a free management consultant? Not that I’d want one – I am a management consultant. I suppose I could swap the free management consultant for a Dell, as I would like another one of those. (Dell – pse note positive comment re. Dell in last sentence and send me a free laptop. Thanks.)