Part 2: How I Monetized My Blog

This is probably the most-asked-about topic I get, so I wrote a little blog post to help clear up any misconceptions and, hopefully, answer all your questions! 

I’ve picked up from where we left off in Part 1 of Blogging Basics and Monetization. Be sure to check out that post to catch up!

I’m super excited to give you a little peek into how I’ve turned my blogging hobby into a money-making business by working with brands for paid, sponsored posts. Sponsored content is tricky. On one hand, bloggers need to get paid for providing their audiences with killer content and useful information, but on the other hand, sponsored content can feel fake or unauthentic if it’s not done in the proper way. 

In order to touch on a little bit of everything, I’ll split this post up into three sections:

1. When I knew I was ready to start reaching out to brands
2. Connecting with brands and logistics of a sponsored post
3. Authenticity as an influencer.

How did I know I was ready?

As most of you know, I’ve had a blog for over 6 years, but it wasn’t until just over 2 years ago that I decided I wanted to turn this hobby into a side business. I had been posting a lot of content about my favorite baby and kid brands. Then friends and women in my community began asking me for recommendations for products, local activities, gift ideas and more. I realized that I not only enjoyed finding the newest and most innovative products, but also people were finding my information useful.

My Instagram following was growing at a rapid pace. I felt like I had a large-enough audience where I could provide substantial business to the brands that I was already “promoting”. So I started doing my research about the “business of blogging”. I read a lot of blogs, but the course that helped me the most was Influencer Academy by Gwen Lane of The LA Girl. 

In addition to courses, I did a lot of field research. By field research, I mean I looked at the Instagram accounts and blogs of my favorite bloggers who were already successful in the business. What brands were they working with? What things were they doing that made them succeed?

Brand style and cohesiveness:

A similarity I noticed in all of the bloggers was that their Instagram feeds and blogs all seemed to have a brand style. The blog and Instagram accounts all worked together. Each blogger had their own recognizable style. At this point, I decided if I was serious about this, I needed to rebrand and make my website and Instagram look more professional. I’m so beyond grateful that I was introduced to Christina Cate from Cate Creative. Christina quickly took all of my thoughts, ideas and goals to help me create my vision for my brand. We made A Glass of Goldwater come to life.

My brand’s new look was professional, and I wasn’t embarrassed to pitch myself to brands. With a clear mission and vision in mind for A Glass of Goldwater with my re-vamped look, I began the next step to gaining sponsored brand deals…finding brand campaigns and pitching to brands.

How to find brand sponsorships:

I get my sponsored posts 3 different ways:

1. The brand reaches out to me directly
2. I pitch a collaboration to the brand
3. I apply to or am invited to campaigns that brands post on various brand/influencer online networks

It feels pretty great when the brand reaches out to me first. This means that they’ve noticed my social media presence and are interested in what I have to offer them. This is how I got my brand deals with Pampers Pure, Children’s Urgent Care and the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum (coming soon!) — just to name a few. Make your account stand out so you have a better chance of bigger brands noticing you!

Here are just a few tips that could help you get noticed by bigger brands:

1. Tag brands in your posts that include their products.
2. Make your Instagram bio easy to read and make sure your best contact email is included.
3. Monitor your “other” folder of DMs. 

Other times I’ll pitch a collaboration to the brand itself. While doing this via Instagram DMs can work occasionally, more often than not, if anyone responds on Instagram, it’s someone just managing the account. If you’re lucky, they’ll give you an email to contact someone in marketing or press for the brand. It might save you time to go straight to a brand’s website. You can often find a media inquiry email address there.

My #1 piece of advice when reaching out to a brand?

Be prepared. While you think *know* how fabulous you are, and your dad prints out all of your posts for the fridge, really, you are 1 tiny fish in the middle of a ginormous sea of influencers. Brands want to know what makes you different. Why should they work with you? And you have to be able to give them facts to tell them why you’re the best choice for their brand.

It’s helpful to have something called a media kit. Christina from Cate Creative made mine. It’s basically a summary of your account — including your demographics, reach of your posts, etc. It’s also a great place to showcase what brands you’ve worked with previously. Remember, each sponsored post is an addition to your portfolio, making you that much more marketable as an influencer.

Influencer/Brand Online Networks:

I would say I get about 70% of my sponsored posts from these networks. Similar to a recruiting agency, these online networks are platforms where brands can post campaign opportunities and influencers can apply. As an influencer, you usually have to apply to be part of the network before you’re eligible to apply to brand campaigns. 

Once you start to be accepted to campaigns, it’s likely that you’ll have a few different contacts who manage the brands. Once they get to know you better, they’ll start sending you invitations for future campaigns. This is what happened when I first posted for Albertson’s/Jewel-Osco’s Drive Up & Go Service. My contact liked me and my content. Then I was selected for the Monopoly Shop Play Win! campaign with Jewel-Osco that I’m in the middle of right now.

If you’re interested in the influencer networks I’m a part of, stay tuned for Part 3, where I’ll be giving you exclusive access to these and more! 

Back up…What exactly is a sponsored post?

So we’ve been talking about sponsored posts for a while now, and I want to pause for anyone who might be confused. A #sponsored post or #ad is a blog post or social media post where the influencer has been paid to produce content that promotes a brand or product. This can be either monetary compensation OR free product. Yes, free product IS considered a form of payment, both by your taxes and by the FTC. Influencers MUST disclose if something was #gifted, even if they don’t want to use the word #sponsored on the post or IG story. 

I know it may look like one simple photo and caption to many of you, but a lot of time and work go into sponsored posts. I’m going to break it down for you:

1. After we (the influencers) apply, reach out and communicate with the brands, a contract is officially signed, and ta-da! We’re in business!
2. Most campaigns come with an extremely long and detailed brief of both fine details and broader terms that are required of us when producing our content.
3. Sometimes we have to hire and pay for our own photographers to shoot the photos for the campaign. 
4. Then we use our creativity to create content that both highlights the brand while staying true to our personal brand and mission.
5. Oftentimes the posts then have to be approved by the client before we can post. So there is a whole period of waiting, and occasional editing, that comes with the job.
6. Finally, we get approval and can post. Next comes promoting and praying that our content is successful. Successful — meaning that it translates into good exposure and/or business for the client we’re working for.

This is all only if the job is a single Instagram post. The client may want 10, quality images to choose from, or the campaign can require multiple social media posts. And a blog post — well, that’s a whole other ball game. It takes A LOT of time to write a quality blog post. Like this one, for example. I’ve been writing it for two weeks trying to perfect it. And my deadline for this post is pretty forgiving. When you work with an actual client, you have to be punctual, if you ever want the chance to work with them again.

Finally, I want to talk about authenticity:

It’s tricky. Like I mentioned earlier, the business aspect of being an influencer and blogger is to get paid for the content we produce. To some people this seems insincere. Like influencers are only producing the content because they’re getting paid, not because they actually like the product. 

And I’m sure that for some influencers, unfortunately, this is true. I mean, do you really like that green juice? LOL. But in all seriousness, and I can only speak for myself here, I only post about brands and products that I genuinely use and like. And if a brand asks me to promote a new product, like Stonyfield Kids Snack Packs, I make sure to try the product before I agree to promote it.

I’ve turned down brand deals because they didn’t align with the integrity of my brand or I didn’t like the product. In fact, I’ve even returned product that was sent to me because I couldn’t honestly give it a good review. 

Now you might be asking, “Well, what about the bad reviews? We want to hear those too!” What I’ll say to that, is that I really try to keep brand-talk positive. I never like to openly put down a brand, because not everyone may feel the same way as me. A bad review, especially in an online forum, can really hurt the reputation of a brand — far more than just the one bad review. 

So if I don’t like a product, I might make slight mention of it or allude to it, but I try to keep that pretty low key. Usually I just focus on products I do like instead! I hope you can understand that.

So there you go!

That was long, but I think I covered a lot of topics and questions that I get from readers pretty regularly. If you ever have any questions about my brand deals or my authenticity, I would love for you to reach out instead of sit with a bad taste in your mouth! Hopefully I will be able to clear up any confusion or issues! 

Lastly, thank you all for supporting me throughout this entire venture — for using the products I love or frequenting the brands that I promote. That helps me to continue to be able to bring you the content you love. It also helps me to support my family, while living my dream and crushing my goals.

Look for Part 3: Photos, posts and the editing process + My Favorite Blogging Resources, coming soon!

This post was NOT sponsored ;). 

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