Your last sentence is so, so true. I have bought so many items (primarily beauty products and books) after reading about them on various blogs. However, not once did I purchase directly after clicking on the link from the blog post, not because I have anything against the blogger, but rather because I need a period of deliberation before purchasing anything.

I manage a brand and learned early on to drop bloggers. We tested big and small bloggers, including ones who have a blog on The Age and appear on morning TV sometime.

It all started with emails from bloggers we would interact with on Twitter. Each one said they loved our products and could they have some samples to write about it. Each one spoke of their influence. One – even said whenever she appears on TV with a particular fashion item, the company sells out that day. Yet her The Age blog is a ghost town and has since been dropped.

So, I believed it. I sent out $000’s of dollars worth of samples of this particular fashion accessory. Some bloggers did a great job but it resulted in no sales and little impressions Some bloggers promised the world and then wrote one paragraph. A good portion took the product and ran. As in, I kept getting excuses to why nothing had been written and then ignored all together. The worst ones had a small niche readership and acted all exclusive saying things like ‘I’ll have to see if its something I can align with my image but Id love some free samples and I’ll let YOU know’

When I read a little closer I noticed the majority of comments on fashion blogs are from other bloggers trying to drum up a readership for themselves. These people will be more likely to ask for free product than be potential buyers of my brand.

The attitudes of some were atrocious. Some would say ‘Well I charge $200 for a blog plus all the FREE product I need’. When you’d ask to see their metrics they’d say ‘I was blogger of the year in 2013’

End result? No contribution to sales, no substantial brand recognition and a lot of wasted time from this marketing channel. Also I have such a disdain for bloggers general attitude of false influence and their expectations of compensation when they add little value. I now ignore the 10 or so emails I get a week for ‘Can you send me FREE product so I can write about it on my oh-so-influential- blog’.

I say, by all means blog away. Just stop trying to align yourself with brands unless you understand that you are there as value as a salesperson.

I don’t know how much my blog influences people; I do see some click-through traffic and occasionally friends tell me they ended up in the black-hole of the Topshop website for hours after I linked to a pair of shoes.