Over the course of your blogging career, there are a ton of offers that are going to come your way and unfortunately most of them will be worthless. Your credibility is going to be based on how much useful and relevant information you provide your readers. This useful and relevant term also applies to the offers you have embedded within your site.
Quick Story To Illustrate A Point
During the beginning stages of one of my niche blogs, I got an offer through email to pay for text links. He had gone through my site, picked out 8 articles that he wanted to include paragraphs in and sent me an email offering me 120.00 US for the deal.
Here is what he was proposing:
- The text links would stay in the posts for the life of the articles.
- Text links would be relevant to the articles content.
- Payment would be made through Paypal.
- I could edit the paragraphs as I see fit.
Sounded like a good deal for a beginning blog that was gaining huge traffic grounds, but the monetization had not caught up yet. I tend to do more research than required, so instead of agreeing right away…I asked for the links and an example on another site.
In the next email, he sent me what I asked for and it was nothing like he had described. When I visited the example site, the links were not relevant and the paragraph screamed spam right in the middle of the article. The offer was turned down and I moved on.
What if it was relevant and did not look like spam? There would are two parts of the deal that would have to change.
- There would be terms attached to the deal. Nothing is forever…including and advertising on one of my sites. With every deal, come to an agreement on terms that is beneficial for both parties. In this case, the advertiser was trying to get a lot for a little. This is great for him, but not so great for me. What if my readers got really turned off by the ads or one of those articles hit a social media site and received tons of traffic? Either way…you are stuck with the original deal.
- Negotiation On Price – Price would be determined and adjusted within terms.
When To Say No
If you are truly trying to start a business and not just a “Make Money Online” site, your credibility is everything. In the beginning, deals like this can be exciting and new because you are not used to having money thrown at you for something as simple as text within an article. You are trying to build a community that trusts your opinion not a flock of sheep that are just going to click any link that you throw in front of them.
It is extremely important that every single one of your affiliates and advertising provide your readership with a solution that they need filled. It may not apply to every reader, but it should apply to most of them. The minute you lose that credibility, the harder it is to gain back. Is that really worth 120.00?