Hai friends.
Time for another FAQ post. This is just a combination of some of the questions I get sent to me about blogging.
See the other two posts here:
I’ve been sent products from the US and I’ve been left a card saying I have to pay an import tax fee, what should I do?
Ah, I’ve had this before and I just left it to the Post Office and I expect it eventually got returned to sender.
I think the first thing you should do is e-mail the company who has sent the products and ask if they can cover the fee for you, which is around £11 I think?
If they’re not willing to pay, you can either not pick it up, or pick it up if you really want the products – that part is up to you.
Just be honest with the contact who has arranged for this to be sent out and take it from there.
A brand wants to work with me and is asking what benefits I can give them, how should I respond?
Well, first of all – what can they offer you? Unless they are paying you, or giving you a gift that’s high value, I’m not sure they should be asking you things like this. I mean, they can, but in my experience when I’ve been asked for details like this, they become hard work and very specific about how they want the review, when, what links, shares no social etc.
Honestly, if it was for something free I would be reluctant to reply because it would take a lot of time to put together a pitch e-mail – which sounds like what they want – and they could just view my blog, see my comment engagement, view my social media and such there and then.
It might be handy to have a media pack available for instances like this.
Generally, you should include things like:
- Readers age/location is idea for their products.
- Your social media following and how you can promote them there.
- Possibly your monthly page views.
- Examples of similar posts you’ve done in the past.
See How to create a media pack and how to write a blog pitch for more information.
My blog isn’t very popular but I’ve had a chance to become a regular blogger on another blog. I see a lot of bloggers saying services should not be provided for free. I’m not sure how to discuss it with the blog in question and if I am popular enough to be charging etc
Well, this is a hard one. I think the first thing you need to do is just ask if they have a budget then take it from there
If they don’t you may still want to consider writing for them if they get a lot of traffic, if they have a high DA and will let you link to your blog in your post.
If it’s a popular site that earns money and has a team of people working on it, I’d probably be annoyed about being asked to write for free, but if it’s a small site that doesn’t make money, or is ran by one person just trying to get a message out there, I’d be okay with it if I had the time.
You could always ask to submit one article and see how it goes, then decide if you want to become a regular contributor!
If you’re not getting any benefits from it, you might as well write an article and post it to your own site.
I’m confused about unique monthly visitors. How are they different to page views?
Unique Monthly Visitors, or UMV, are how many individual people have viewed your site in a month.
So, if I visit your site once, you get a new unique monthly visitor. If I visit 5 more times that month, although I am giving you page views and sessions, I’m not going to increase your unique monthly visitor.
In Google Analytics, Unique Monthly Visitors are your users. If you see in the snap below, I’ve had 9,469 UMV’s in April 2016. This has added up to 19, 530 across 13,426 sessions.
For more information about sessions, page views and how to find this information for yourself, see my post about Google Analytics basics.
If you have any questions you would like answering, just leave them below!
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This is really helpful. I also got sent some products with tax fees before, but I really love the product too so I just paid the tax fee. Good to know that if I don’t want to pay, I can just leave it there.
besos,
M
The Flower Duet
UMV’s always threw me, at least now I know which number to look at now! Great tips, I can’t say I’m surprised about the overseas package fees, you’d think they would have thought about that, but then again if they don’t have to pay for it, and reap no financial benefit from doing so, they probably aren’t bothered! You’re like a blogging Wizard!
Sarah 🙂
Saloca in Wonderland
The company can send the parcel marked as gift and it’s tax free. I think it’s better this way as, basically, it’s a gift for consideration. Although if the blogger agreed to write about the items no matter what, then it will not work.
I love this post, some things are making more sense now! Tania xx taniamichele.blogspot.co.uk
Great question and great respond I believe is any company want to send someone an item out of state they should cover all the fee not the blogger.
How do you see your umv on wordpress as a self hosted blogger?
http://sheismelrose.net/
Have just been stalking all your blogging posts.. very helpful!
Your posts are always so helpful and informative, thanks for being so awesome! 🙂
I hope you don’t stop doing these type of posts, Corinne. Seriously I learned a huge lot from you, thank you.
Haha I always get a kick when brands ask about what benefits you can offer when they’re prepared to offer nothing in return. It’s like hey this is a two way street.
It’s so helpful to find out how other bloggers respond to situations. It’s very reassuring to have an open dialogue about it, so thank you for providing that. Xx
Tania | When Tania Talks
Such great tips especially for me who just starting out! Great post!
Thank you for sharing. This is really helpful.
Great FAQs! Very helpful.
I’ve always been mindful about being sent anything from the USA.
I can relate when brands of all kinds contact me and ask me to write a blog post about a specific topic and then ask me to mention their brand or their website in the post… and then when I ask them “why should I do this for you” , they claim that my readers will benefit from it.. uhm, well, my readers are not the one putting in the time to write the post, lol…
An interesting post, the import tax is an interesting one I haven’t experienced this but useful to know Lucy x