The idea that "I am doing you a favor and giving you free publicity and tons of traffic by featuring your work and you should feel so incredibly lucky to be featured on my blog" only goes so far. The idea that bloggers should be able to make money from their blogs yet receive all their content for free and without a fair exchange is absurd.
Intellectual property is not a free-for-all and it needs to stop being treated as such. If the photographers were not allowing bloggers to publish royalty-free content that they own they copyright to, blogs would have to license and pay for photos like the rest of the online world or continually publish their own original content. The relationship between blogger and photographer goes two ways. "Free publicity" does have a monetary value attached to it for the photographer and, frankly, most blogs never meet it in what they provide in return.
Another thing that's important to note: most service vendors do not care how many impressions your blog serves up; they care about how many click-throughs and interactions with their own sites your blog generates for them. For a service professional, page views do not lead to client conversions at a high enough rate to matter. Click-throughs and subscriptions to their own blogs do (an aside: for product vendors, impressions are very valuable). If you want to prove that your blog is valuable, focus more on sending traffic to your advertisers and editorial partners than on building your own. Currently, Junebug Weddings, Offbeat Bride, Snippet and Ink and The Bride's Cafe consistently send more traffic to vendors featured than many of the other wedding blogs, including ones that receive more traffic, because they understand this so well.
Wedding blogs can be an effective outlet for publicity, but they are not the end-all, be-all for a vendor's marketing strategy. Thankfully, not all bloggers treat content as a god-given right, but enough do that it sours the experience for everyone else involved.
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8 comments:
There's an old addage in the Art world with respect to "free publicity".
You're giving me exposure? You can die from exposure.
Bloggers are not the only ones. Mainstream media are all for free content too.
Love this Liene! Thank you for giving voice to many of the thoughts of this industry. Great photography doesn't just happen, we work very hard and we appreciate those who value our labor.
All I can say is, awesome post today!
i'd love to know what spurred on this post. i love it though. very real and true! too many bloggers are too precious about their content and treat it like they earned it. at the end of the day it's a 2 way street. us bloggers would not be anything without the photographers giving us such awesome content and if we can send some traffic and bookings their way in return then AMAZING!
I'd you to delve deeper and explain why you think obb, the brides cafe, snippet & ink and junebug do it so well.
Thank you for this post. I enjoyed it.
Wow, thank you so much for this post. I get so frustrated when people ask us to give up our copyright for an article then act like we're supposed to be thanking them for it. I am perfectly happy to give things to others for free -but it would be nice if they were equally appreciative and acted like they were truly thrilled - instead of acting like I should be thrilled because of the exposure. Gratitude often goes a long way in this field.
Hi Liene,
Thank you so much for noticing how Junebug feels about the artists that contribute to our content. We are very lucky to be able to do what we love for a living and to have the support of so many talented people that we love and admire.
Great post Liene - I can't agree with you more. It has to be a symbiotic relationship between bloggers and service providers. Our premise is simple - we want to drive as much traffic as possible to our vendors. Traffic to our site is great, but without the support of our vendors and bloggers, we would not be able to have a sustainable business.
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