I’ve been contacted recently by an online vintage swap shop website who would like me to review their website in exchange for some freebies. Obviously my first thought was “Woo hoo! Free shiz!” (I am just a girl, an unemployed one at that!) but then I realised that it wouldn’t really be keeping with my blog. I know I write random crap here most of the time, but it is all my opinion, there is no one influencing what I write by tempting me with free stuff, etc.
The company in question has sent quite a few emails to me – all with the same standard template but with varying amounts of how any “credits” for their site they were prepared to tempt me to review them. That seemed a little odd to me – if you are emailing bloggers asking them if they would review you, wouldn’t you keep track of who had been contacted, and how much had been offered?
The reason I am writing about this is because I thought it would be a good idea to Google the company to see if anyone else had taken the bait. I found a few blogs who had written about the site, but none had mentioned that they had received (in some form) a payment for writing the review. If I were to review something I had received free, I would want to disclose that fact!
I guess in my round about way, I am saying that I am not sure what to do. Where do you stand on sponsored posts like this? Would you admit to receiving stuff for free that you had reviews? Would you feel pressured to give a positive review?
If it had happened to me personally, I would check out the website in question and if you think it is worth writing about then do it. If not then I wouldn’t bother.
If you were going by the above I wouldn’t write that you received stuff as ppl would not believe your honesty if you did actually like it
You could mention they asked you to write a review though so ppl can see why it might not be in context to your usual posts
I think I would probably accept, but only if the product was something I was actually interested in trying out.
But I would make it clear to them that I would only give a fair review, and that I would be including a disclaimer on my post.
I don’t think free stuff should sway people into dishonesty just because they feel like they should be nicer about the product. I guess you should review it as if you were imagining that you had paid the full amount for it.
No disclaimers, no “i got this for free”, just be totally honest and if it’s shit, say so, and see if they still pay you.
If they don’t then you can slag them off LOTS. Happy days.
Isn’t that how all reviewing works? I used to write reviews of books, theatre, comedy gigs and art shows for my student paper and the deal was, you get the product/tickets for free and in return you write a review. I never felt pressured to be positive, in fact I quite enjoyed the chance to be critical.