Over the last few months, I’ve received my fair share of odd emails, pitches, requests to publish pre-written content and link exchange requests. I’ve also received some great emails, some smart pitches, and some really lovely offers.

I wanted to discuss my opinions on all those things because I bang on about it on Twitter a lot, but 140 characters doesn’t cut it. I have a lot to say, so bear with me. I don’t intend this to be a ‘fits all’ post about how to approach bloggers. This is just about me. That said, the conversations I’ve had with other bloggers recently seem to suggest most of us do have a similar opinion on this.

We love to make money from our blogs. But we don’t want to sell out or mislead anyone in order to do so.

Two years ago, I dealt mostly with PRs. Now I also get loads of emails from SEO agencies. This may be because I’ve moved into a niche with smaller PR budgets. It may be because I get different traffic to the more mainstream sites I used to edit. But from what I’ve heard from other bloggers and industry folks, it’s just the way the industry is moving. It’s about links, rankings and keywords, not just coverage. And bloggers put loads of link on their sites so they’re an ideal target.

The problem is that the majority of the emails I get are badly written, badly targeted, uninspiring, even patronising on occasion. They offer things I have no interest in, or include ridiculous requests no PR would ever dream of making. They offer very little and ask for a lot in return, or expect something for free that they known they should be paying for.

A good blogger knows the value of a link or post on their blog. Whether it gets 100 visitors a day or 10,000 visitors a day, if a blog contains unique content written by someone with a passion for a specific niche, it’s useful to anyone trying to appeal to that niche. As one SEO expert said to me only last week, “content is king.” It’s just how that content is used and manipulated that is changing. People working in SEO have told me that often it’s not about high volume traffic – it’s about who else is already linked on that page, the keywords it contains, the quality of the writing or the reputation of the writer. Not to mention the fact some people just want to be linked on as many sites as possible, no matter their size.

So I thought I would go through some of the offers I get and explain why I think they do or do not work for me.

1. Link exchanges (including 3-way link exchanges)

I know that, done correctly, link exchanges can improve google ranking and be useful when it comes to SEO, especially the 3-way ones. But while I love linking to great new sites I’ve discovered, or supporting fellow bloggers, I still say no to ridiculous requests that don’t suit my sites. I have absolutely no interest in seeing my link on boutiquesansgluten or Hottanningbeds or whatever other badly target website a mass-mailout is trying to push this week. I hate all this “I have a PR4 site that I can place your link on…” stuff. Even worse than this are the emails that ask for a link exchange but don’t include a URL. Yes, that really happens.

2. Product reviews

This is a popular one at the moment, and when it’s well-targeted it can work because it’s mutually beneficial. Bloggers gets a good post out of it and the brand gets a dedicated blog post, sometimes with an agreed keyword link, for the cost of a product rather than the cost of a sponsored post. I’m happy to do this, provided the brand is relevant, and I’ve had some great reactions to reviews I’ve done in the past, with many of them still the most viewed pages on my sites years after first being published. My only stipulation is that I get to write whatever I want and be honest about my experience. There’s no copy approval, and obviously I won’t take cash for positive reviews and I hope nobody else would either.

However, I go into these partnerships with caution and pick and choose the ones I actually do, because many times there’s a catch. Often pushiness with regards to deadline (“Please publish the review within 3 days of receiving the product” – um, you realise I have a full time job outside of this?) or requests to make changes to the review once it’s gone live, often to add in contextual links (if it’s not discussed before the product is sent, don’t bother). Integrity comes first so I think it’s important to cherry pick the opportunities that are right for each specific site. As tempting as it is, I don’t say yes to every review opportunity just because it’s free. I try to do it because the product is right and the brand is relevant.

As an aside, I always disclose that I got the product for free. I know this is not the law in the UK yet, but it’s good practice all the same.

Guest posts

In theory, a guest post is a great thing. In the past I’ve had some great opportunities to put things on blogs that I could never do on my own; interviews with experts, sneak peeks at new things from brands, stories from people working within the industry and so on. A proper guest post is about providing a blogger with something that is exclusive and useful. Something that they don’t have the access or knowledge to write themselves.

The problem I’ve encountered recently is that the ‘guest posts’ I’m being offered are nothing of the sort. They’re link-building articles tarted up to sound like amazing bespoke content. The emails that sell them in are corporate bullshit, sent out en masse to hundreds of bloggers in the hopes someone bites. And they get me really angry.

To the people pitching this kind of thing, STOP IT! Why should I let a random who’s never emailed me before suddenly start doing my job for me? What makes you think I want your free ‘article’ when I started blogging because I like writing? I can churn our poorly-written crap perfectly well on my own, I don’t need you to do it. I’m also smart enough to know the difference between a guest post and an SEO article full of strange links, so don’t patronise me and make out this is an offer I can’t refuse.

Offer these free articles to people who struggle to write content, not bloggers, who’re all about content.

Paid Links

As far as I’m concerned, paying for links is advertising. I will happily put paid text links in the sidebars of my sites. You can see the specific advertising areas where I place these if you look at the sites themselves.

But I won’t put paid contextual links within posts that are already on the site. I won’t write new posts and fill them with paid links, either. That’s a sponsored post. I’ll consider sponsored links at the bottom of posts, but it depends entirely on the link, the agreed method of disclosure, and what bills need paying! Generally, I think too many paid or sponsored links can be damaging to the blog, so I try to keep things to a minimum.

Sponsored Posts

Relevant brand? Happy for the post to be disclosed clearly as sponsored content? Got something exciting my readers will like? Got some lovely imagery? Happy to let me write the copy myself so it fits the tone of the site? Willing to pay me actual money? Amazing, let’s talk!

Problem with any of the above? Maybe try someone else. Or tell your PR to get in touch. If the story is good enough, maybe I’ll write about it anyway.

Affiliate Links

Signing up for individual affiliate schemes as a blogger with relatively low traffic is just not worth it, so I use Skimlinks, which aggregates all affiliate commissions. One line of code turns all possible links on my site into affiliate ones, but I don’t actively think about it. I write about what I want, and if those links can be turned into affiliate links, it’s an added bonus. Skimlinks even have a great little disclosure button you can pop on your site to explain this, which is great.

For the record, I consider all companies / sites when I’m writing blog posts, regardless of whether they have an affiliate scheme. In fact, according to Skimlinks, only 22% of the links on Big Girls Browse are affiliate links.

In Summary

I know I’ve moaned quite a lot above, but the fact is I am always open to discussing commercial partnerships and I love working with relevant brands. I just feel that much of this SEO to blogger communication is going wrong because we aren’t getting down to the nitty gritty soon enough.

I’d be far more open to these kind of discussions if people were just honest about what they want from the start. You want a link on my site. That’s fine – just come out and ask for it and we can discuss how that might happen. I don’t need all the bullshit that comes with it.

Now me…

Ok, so I’ve banged on a bit about what I do and don’t like about the way folks approach me. Now for the flipside – some notes about where I sometimes go wrong.

1) I don’t deliver.
It’s ok to chase me up if we agreed something and I failed to deliver. Sometimes I miss deadlines or forget things because I’m terrible at planning and keeping track. But please bear in mind that I run my blogs in my spare time, I do have a life and sometimes I step away from my computer. If we didn’t agree a deadline, don’t give me one in retrospect – that’s not how it works! Just give me a nudge and I’ll sort something out.

2) I oversell
If you request my ad rates, and I send them to you, and you think they’re ridiculously high, please don’t just ignore me and leave it there. Email me back and let me know your thoughts. I think my rates are fair – not so high I’m taking the piss but not so low I give the impression I’m not taking this seriously. And until you give me feedback, I’m going to continue to think that.

3) I lie about my stats.
No I don’t! Sure, I round up or down to the nearest bunch of zeros, but I don’t see the point in tacking a few thousand extra hits on, just to disappoint. What I tell you is the gospel according to Google Analytics.

4) I moan about your email approach from my Twitter account
I’m probably joking. Or not talking about you. Or maybe what you said in your email really was ridiculous. If it offends you, stop looking at my twitter feed. What you don’t know won’t hurt you.

5) I don’t write for [insert site here] any more
Sorry, sometimes people change jobs! The sidebar of this site and my twitter profile always give the most up to date information.

6) I’ve got it all wrong
I know what I want to do with my own websites. I might be wrong about everything I’ve said above. Perhaps if I did more link exchanges, published more link-building articles and sold more text links within my copy, I’d be living in a mansion by now. But I sincerely doubt it.

Feel free to prove me wrong though! Send your limo to pick me up and drive me to your mansion, and we’ll talk…

NB: Obviously, these rules only apply to the blogs I own and run myself (this one and Big Girls Browse). With regards to other blogs I work on or contribute to, different rules may apply!

My first trip to Melbourne was in 2008. Jo, the friend I went with back then, now lives out there, which may indicate just how much we loved it.

So it’s not surprise that only three years later, I hopped on a Qantas A380 for another trip. This time, the real reason for the trip was the wedding of one of my boyfriend’s oldest friends. But it was also the perfect chance to see Jo again and catch up with the gorgeous Kim (aka the current ed of Catwalk Queen) who I’d not seen since she made a whistlestop trip to the UK for Kat’s wedding last year.

So here we are, reunited at Palmz, the tiki-themed rooftop bar at the Carlton, which I would definitely recommend to anyone on a night out in the Melbourne CBD.

As you can see from our coats, Melbourne in May isn’t that warm. In fact, it’s been the coldest, wettest May they’ve had in about a decade apparently, so while all you Brits were enjoying a mild, beautiful month in your sundresses and flipflops, I was on the other side of the world wrapped up in opaque tights and scarves. Need more proof? Here I am at the zoo, insanely excited to be visiting yet another butterfly house. I LOVE butterfly houses.

However, the cold weather did nothing to dampen our spirits, even when we headed to the Dandenong Ranges (forest-covered hills just outside of Melbourne, littered with log cabins, tree lodges and holiday cottages and tiny towns full of sweet shops and posh restaurants) for the wedding, only to be greeted with thick, muggy fog (soon to be joined by endless driving rain).

By this point, we’d been joined by friends from London, and the groomsmen and the WAGs (as I insisted on calling myself and the wives) shared the main house at Lochiel, a four bedroom property boasting an outdoor hot tub that sadly, due to the weather, we didn’t get chance to test out. Even though we drew the short straw and got the small room with twin beds, it was comfy and peaceful, and it was lovely to spend a few days out of the city in great company.

The wedding was held on Friday 13th, so it’ll come as no surprise that things didn’t exactly run smoothly. But despite various setbacks, from missing suits to missing guests, it all came together in the end. Spirits were high, the ceremony was lovely, the bride and groom looked happy and the speeches went down without too much getting lost in translation.

Um, the less said about the limo crashing (gently) into a tree at the end of the night the better.

After the wedding, our friends went up to Cairns but we returned to Melbourne. The city centre is fairly small and easy to get around, and you can probably do most of the really touristy things within a few days. We visited all the usual places; the museums, the botanical gardens (above), the zoo, the aquarium, the casino, and they’re all pretty fantastic. But for me half the fun is the unplanned stuff, just walking round and exploring the different areas, eating, drinking and shopping your way around the city.

We were really lucky having friends out there that we got some great local recommendations. We never ate a bad meal, we visited some great new areas I’d not been to before (like Fitzroy and St Kilda) and Kim clued me in on a great new boutique hotel chain that I have to share with you.

The joy of a new hotel is that off season you can get amazing rates as they try to fill rooms. Thanks to a bit of luck and a lot of research, we ended up being able to spend some of our time staying at the Blackman hotel, which (lack of free wifi aside) I simply couldn’t fault.

The hotel is part of the Art Series hotel chain, all themed around Aussie artists, so attention to detail and aesthetics was beautiful. I was sold the moment I saw the upholstered Louis Ghost chairs, but we also had Charles Blackman prints throughout, a shelf of coffee table books (all on art, natch) and all kinds of lovely design touches. The bed was the comfiest I’ve ever slept in, the shower was seriously powerful, and there was even a kitchenette so eating in was an option on cheap days.

Oh, and the view from the balcony helped too…

I also have to give a nod (though I didn’t take any pictures) to the Cube Serviced Apartments, which had affordable, clean and well kitted out rooms in a great location for a really, really good price. After the Blackman I was expecting to be brought smack down to earth with something very bland and basic, but the cube really exceeded my expectations. If you ever head to Melbourne on a budget but want something a step up from hostels, definitely keep this place in mind.

Federation Square, Melbourne’s answer to Leicester Square

Needless to say, my second trip didn’t dampen my enthusiam for Melbourne, and I’m already mentally planning another trip in 4 or 5 years time. Despite the weather, the ridiculous exchange rate that meant a glass of wine was £7, and the inexplicable onset of air sickness on the return journey (seriously?!) I had a fantastic time and would go back tomorrow if I could.