Making the decision to take your blog into a professional and full-time career is not for the light at heart. The hours involved are nothing short of insane and in the beginning it probably makes more sense to work a part time job bagging groceries. Not kidding in the slightest, making money in the beginning stages of blogging is tough. Not to be discouraged though, it’s completely possible. We’ve been able to grow our hobby blog to a six figure income in the last couple years and have to LOVE it!
Eventually, as a full-time blogger who wants to start having more of a proactive schedule instead of reactive to the emails that come in, you’re going to want to pitch brands and start bringing your own work in. I know, I know, this can be scary.
We have some great tips to share that will help get you off on the right foot as well as some templates to use as examples when you’re ready to start.
Why Should You Approach a Brand?
To Control You Schedule
The reason that I started to pitch brands was so that I could be a little bit more in control of the brands that I wanted to work with and even when I worked with them. As a blogger, we get pitched all day long and some of them are jobs we want and others we don’t.
Typically the jobs we do want end up having a pretty fast turn around, 2 weeks or a month, which is pretty quick when you start getting busy. What I’m able to do is pitch brands for jobs and schedule them further out. They’re not part of a campaign that’s happening right now so we have more flexibility with the schedule and timing.
This is a great way to work ahead for the upcoming holidays or organize series you may have for summer months and want to include brands. When you do get emails from brands to work on campaigns, you will have work already lined up and have the opportunity to look at your schedule and see if you have the ability to fit them in at that time.
To Be Seen
Let’s face it, there are thousands of bloggers in this space. Right? Hoping to be seen by those specific brands that you want to work with may take a while. Brands may not even know you’re out there. Why not introduce yourself and get seen. Put yourself out there for them to see who you are and what your work looks like.
You may be using a brand regularly, a brand you love and are exclusively using. Partnering with this brand only makes sense for both of you, but they don’t know you’re out there! They have no idea you love them and would love to help them. Sending an email to introduce yourself and asking if they work with bloggers is a great way to partner with brands.
For More Work
Instead of sitting around and waiting for the work to come to you, get out there and FIND the work! I can remember checking my email over and over again, waiting for work to come in. I think back on that and boy was that a huge waste of time. Instead of waiting for the work to come to me, I should have been out looking for the jobs.
Things to Think About When Crafting a Pitch Email
Think about all the brands that you use at home all the time, how much you genuinely love them – that’s where you start. Those are the brands that you want to work with. If you’ve mentioned them in your blog posts in the past, include those examples in your email that you send. This will give them a glimpse of your work and just what a post wold look like.
Have you shared something about this brand on social media? Send the Facebook Post, Tweet or Instagram along in your email too! Don’t be shy, share what you’ve done and what you CAN do for them!
Getting Started and Email Templates
Finding an email for the brand you want to work with is probably the first step. This can be easy and it can be tricky to find too. One of the best ways to find an email is to search their website for a Media Section, typically there are PR, Social Media and Marketing emails located somewhere in that information.
Next, you need to draft an email to send to the brand you’d like to work with. Make sure that the email is personal, maybe even mention one of the products they have that you love. You want to make sure that the brand knows just how much you really enjoy their products and want to work with them.
We have a great Email Template to share with you. This is very very similar to what I send to brands when I’m looking to work with them. You can easily customize and use yourself! Head over HERE to find the email template or click on the photo below!
Give it some Time
After I have sent out my email to the brand that I’d love to work with, I typically wait two weeks to hear back. Sometimes it’s right away and other times it takes a few days or weeks. In my email I ask if I can send them a proposal and almost always, the brand would like to hear what I have to offer and I put together a personalized proposal for that specific brand. This is not something that I send the same thing to every brand, I put a lot of thought into what the brand’s message is and what I have to offer that will help them.
A couple ideas to include in your proposal:
- Posts – Are you pitching one post or a series?
- Social Media
- Video’s
- Personalized Pinterest Board
- Instagram Extra’s
- Events
Think outside the box, what do you have to offer the brand that everyone else isn’t already doing? Remember that this needs to be a mutually beneficial partnership, not just one sided.
Have your Stats ready to send with this proposal, whether it’s a PDF Media Kit or a link to information on your site like ours is. Have everything together and ready to send along with your proposal.
The Follow Up
Something I like to do after I’ve worked with a brand on a campaign is sending a Wrap-up Report. This will consist of all my Social Media Shares, Post and the page views that the post has had to date. I put everything in a PDF with our logo at the top and send it over to the brand. It’s really helpful to have all those links together in one document for referencing in the future as well.
Remember that you’re not going to get a “YES” on every single email that you send out, so don’t be discouraged! Be sure to check out our Bloggers Resource Page for more tips and products that we use blogging full time!
The Answer is Always No Unless You Ask!
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