There are many, many perks to being a professional blogger. I love the freedom that comes with being my own boss, and setting my own schedule, for example. For the most part, I feel like blogging for a living is my dream job, and I feel very lucky to have made it a reality.

Sometimes I feel rather guilty for struggling with certain aspects of my job, because I know that in comparison to many other jobs, the downsides are very minimal. I worked in fast food as a teenager for a very short period, and it was pretty miserable! So, I am well-aware that these are privileged “problems” to have. Yet, it doesn’t change the fact that certain things are frustrating – so I hope you don’t mind me venting a bit.

In the average week, I would guess I get about 10 emails that claim they are requesting a guest post. Guest posting is something that bloggers sometimes do to share relevant content with a new, but related audience. For example, a lot of what I blog about here on Frank Loves Beans is my pugs, even though this isn’t exclusively a dog blog. But it makes sense for me to try to reach dog-loving audiences, with a pug-loving audience being a particularly great match. If a pug blog were to email me asking me about the offering, accepting or exchanging guest posts, that would probably be a mutually beneficial exchange. If their audience likes pugs, they would enjoy my article about Frank and Beans. If they did like the article enough to come check out the rest of my posts, I may grow my audience a bit which is beneficial for me. Just for the record, I am open to getting guest post requests from other bloggers with similar audiences to my own.

However, 99% of the time when I get an email requesting a guest post, they are actually asking me to post an article for their brand. The article may talk about their golf course, their sunglasses, or their wedding ring website. The whole post is just designed to promote their product.

I am open to helping brands promote their product, but advertising a specific product to my readers does not feel like particularly meaningful content to me. The brand does not have a readership in most cases. Occasionally, brands will have a blog but they are not typically full of dedicated readers who will come check out my blog in return. So…there is no benefit for me, that I can see – other than simply having something to post for the day. If my readers decide to look into the company and potentially purchase, the brand will benefit greatly. In any other format, the brand would expect to pay to promote their product. So, it always surprises me that they don’t seem to recognize that it is a one-sided offer to ask a blogger to share an article promoting your tie company, or your hotel website, or whatever it may be. On rare occasion, these companies will accept a request to pay me for promoting them, but it’s much more common for them to seem offended that I suggested the offer is unfair. They think I should be grateful to have been offered the chance to write about their company. However, bloggers are free to write about products, locations, brands, and so on – at any time. I don’t need permission or an invitation from a watch company to write about their watches.

What is even more surprising, is often times, with further questioning, it becomes clear that the brand wants me to write the post about their products. They do not have a writer on hand to write an article for me to simply publish. No, they want me to invest my time and effort to write and edit a blog post about them. Why would I spend my time doing that work, when it promotes them, and I do not see an increase in traffic as a result?

I often just do not reply to these emails. However, many of them will follow-up every 2-3 days, sometimes for 5+ emails asking me why I have not emailed them back. I often end up feeling like I have a “duty” to inform them that the offer they are providing is not a good deal for me, for the sake of hopefully helping them realize this is why I (and most other) bloggers are not replying to their emails.

My guess is that these companies just assume bloggers are always desperate for blog post inspiration. Sure, I sometimes feel a bit of “writers block” as a blogger. But, I would rather post nothing new at all, than promote a brand I have no connection to, for no benefit in return.