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Thank you for the candid insights. It's a world unknown to me. > Just like how people expect artists to work for "exposure", "influencers" (I really dislike t

by Jedd 8y ago

Thank you for the candid insights. It's a world unknown to me. > Just like how people expect artists to work for "exposure", "influencers" (I really dislike the term, we're just local bloggers as a side project) are often expected to work for free or for perks. Elsewhere you call your blog a passion project, but here you're calling it work -- which suggests your readers / influencees are the product, so to speak. I'm sure it's much more nuanced than this, especially as it's sounding like you're not in it primarily for the income -- could you dive into the motivation for starting, and maintaining, your lifestyle blog?

freehunter 8y ago
I'm calling it work there because brands/companies do approach me to advertise for them, and I would love to get paid for it. That is work in my opinion. The fact that I don't get paid for it puts it back to a hobby level, and the fact that I do it anyway (but only for brands/companies I really enjoy doing business with) puts it as a passion project. If I buy some really good cheddar from my local artisan cheese shop, I'm going to put it on my Instagram whether they pay me to do it or not, because it's really good cheese and people need to know about it. We originally started doing it because our city didn't have any good digital media outlets, so we knew there were all these cool events and local businesses all around us but no one was talking about them. So as long as we were already doing the research to figure out what was happening in our city, we figured we might as well share that. We started it with no intention on making money, the thought never crossed our minds until we started getting demands from companies to advertise for them. After that we started asking for payment from anyone who demanded we talk about them, but even though we rarely successfully get paid, we still talk about the events and businesses we want to talk about. We just ignore demands that don't come with perks, invites, discounts, or cash attached. I guess the motivation is kind of selfish. We live in a place that is commonly understood to be very old and conservative in demographic but we know there are a lot of cool younger people around too. We want to 1) show that our area is cool and we have young and cool people, and 2) attract more young and cool people to the area. It'd be nice to get paid, but there are these other benefits that keep us going too.
- Jedd 8y ago
  This is excellent, thank you again. I would guess I'm mentally in the same place as you describe yourself in the first paragraph -- and reading other comments it sounds like many HNers would self-assess similarly. It's that (probably startling) transition to 'until we started getting demands from companies to advertise for them' that most of us have never experienced, and I can see how that would massively skew the expectations on both sides, especially as popularity / traffic increases and demands get more frequent, emphatic, dubious, etc.

by Jedd 8y ago

freehunter 8y ago

I'm calling it work there because brands/companies do approach me to advertise for them, and I would love to get paid for it. That is work in my opinion. The fact that I don't get paid for it puts it back to a hobby level, and the fact that I do it anyway (but only for brands/companies I really enjoy doing business with) puts it as a passion project. If I buy some really good cheddar from my local artisan cheese shop, I'm going to put it on my Instagram whether they pay me to do it or not, because it's really good cheese and people need to know about it. We originally started doing it because our city didn't have any good digital media outlets, so we knew there were all these cool events and local businesses all around us but no one was talking about them. So as long as we were already doing the research to figure out what was happening in our city, we figured we might as well share that. We started it with no intention on making money, the thought never crossed our minds until we started getting demands from companies to advertise for them. After that we started asking for payment from anyone who demanded we talk about them, but even though we rarely successfully get paid, we still talk about the events and businesses we want to talk about. We just ignore demands that don't come with perks, invites, discounts, or cash attached. I guess the motivation is kind of selfish. We live in a place that is commonly understood to be very old and conservative in demographic but we know there are a lot of cool younger people around too. We want to 1) show that our area is cool and we have young and cool people, and 2) attract more young and cool people to the area. It'd be nice to get paid, but there are these other benefits that keep us going too.

Jedd 8y ago
This is excellent, thank you again. I would guess I'm mentally in the same place as you describe yourself in the first paragraph -- and reading other comments it sounds like many HNers would self-assess similarly. It's that (probably startling) transition to 'until we started getting demands from companies to advertise for them' that most of us have never experienced, and I can see how that would massively skew the expectations on both sides, especially as popularity / traffic increases and demands get more frequent, emphatic, dubious, etc.