A Luxury Travel Blog (Paul Johnson)

ALuxuryTravelBlog.com

I pitched a blog post to the site owner, Paul Johnson. He wrote back:

"What's your advertising budget?"


At first, I thought he might have misunderstood--I'm not an advertiser, I'm a writer. I'm not selling anything except my article--which I'm actually providing to him for free. Yes, a link back to my site or social media profiles (in the bio, not in the text) is usually par for the course, and costs him nothing. On many other sites I write for (larger than his), I get paid.

But, nope, no misunderstanding--I was informed that guest blogging here is a "paid service."

If you can't use my post, fine--send a nicely-worded rejection. But please, please, don't tell me this is about to become a trend. Writers have enough to deal with it as it is, being asked to write for free for "exposure--" are they now going to be expected to PAY for exposure?

Has anyone else encountered this when submitting/pitching blog posts/articles?

I can't tell anyone what to do, or how to make a living. But for the good of writers everywhere, please do not contact this clown.

frimble3 said:

But, you know that somebody's going to bite. So many writers, so few eyes. This guy has the one commodity that everyone wants: readers. Somebody is going to think, 'Hey, it'll get my name out there! People will want to read more of my stuff!' And once one site does it, the rest will claim 'everybody' does it.

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And that's exactly what worries me. I think it's already starting to happen among certain publications who are no longer differentiating between advertisers and writers. I belong to a few discussion boards for travel bloggers, and some of the larger ones claim, "Oh we can't tell the difference between guest posts and advertising, so we just ask everybody for money by default."

Nonsense. When I pitch a story to, say, National Geographic, I get a yes or a no. I don't get told, "Pay us $200 and you can write an article!"

It's a lousy form of doing business that I really hope is not starting to catch on--because writers are going to be the ones who end up suffering, as they always do, sadly.

frimble3 said:

And the readers will suffer, when there's no longer a clear line between a post talking about a person/place or service and an ad for the same.
As it is, the local papers are starting to take pages of text, with an illustration, that I would expect to be 'about' something, only to notice the small-print italicized word 'advertisement' at the tippy-top or very bottom of the page. Of course, some writer is getting paid for that page, so, I suppose, 'Yay!'.

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True, I've noticed those too! In that case, the writer is getting paid by the advertising company, who then pays the publication to place the article. Just like an ad copywriter who writes copy for a magazine ad is being paid by the ad agency, who then pays the magazine to place the ad. So at least there's a clear delineation between who's a writer and who's an advertiser...you don't want to muddy up those waters.