God/bad idea to send free item to blog?

[AnnaSiivonen]

Can´t decide what to do. I got a question from a german blog if I would like to send and item to her and get featured on her blog. When I first got the convo I suspected it could be a scam since the adress she told me to e-mail was another than it said on the blog, but I emailed the blog and got confirmation, so it looks to be OK.

I can´t read german and I don´t have a clue how big/small that blog is, but she have between 14 and 60 comments on her posts. I have no idea if that is bad or good, but my guess is that not many people leave comments so she should have a fair share of readers (or a lot of friends). Anybody have experience of being featured on blogs? Thoughts? Did it help bring traffic?

[TandRHandweaving]

You can use google translate to read her blog. I would read the blog before you make a decision.

[MiloandMolly]

I would be wary of anyone wanting me to send something to them for review. Not that they wouldn't do a review (and a good one at that) but it seems to me like they would just be looking for free stuff, since I'm guessing they aren't going to send it back to you. If you were to do a giveaway where you send a free item to a winner, then that's a different story.

I have had people featured on my blog and have been featured on some others, some with giveaways, some not, but it's always been a mutual kind of thing. I wouldn't say it brought in any remarkable kind of traffic, but it got me some views, I'm sure. I guess you just have to decide if sending a free product to this person is worth it to you, and can you absorb that cost if it goes south.

Good luck!

[Former_Member]

Why not just send her a photo? I mean the blog will just have a photo of your item, right?

How many views will the blog get? If the blog does not have many views, then it might not be worth it. Who will pay for shipping, you or her? Your items seem expensive, so if they are damaged in the process, or if she doesn't get them back, you can lose a potential sale item from your store.

If you think this would be a good investment move, then do it, but not until you discuss matters with this person first.

[Former_Member]

I did a few giveaway/ reviews with different bloggers when I was getting started. Since we didn't have shop stats then I have no Idea how many sales I got from those reviews, But I do know that on my own blog I am still getting lots of traffic from a review that was done months ago!
So.. can you afford to givaway an item to the blogger to review and an item for the givaway????
I don't do it anymore... I don't feel like it benefits me a whole lot. I'd rather use the money /time for paid advertising or something such!

Hope to hear from others too!

[JonEicher]

I would not do it. It puts media control of your product into the hands of a total stranger who may or may not write positively about it. Better to write your own blog extolling the positives of what you do. I suspect these requests are mostly just scams for free stuff.

[AnnaSiivonen]

Tand: I tried with translate, made me only a little wiser, it was a bit of "outfit of the day" and should I buy theese shoes or those...

How does a giveaway usually work, give a selected item to random comment maker?

[AnnaSiivonen]

It was my thought too that she wanted something free, but if it has enough readers and she actually writes something it might be worth it, she claims she have 800 readers.

I´m not sure someone writing something bad about you is always bad for you, some publicity is better than none. I had one of my items in regretsy, they thougt I spelled so badly that I had made "fcck you" earrings, brought me quite a lot of traffic.didn´t think it hurt me any even though regretsy isn´t really the place you aim to be featured in..

[Former_Member]

I've done giveaways, but I've never sent an item to the person who was running the blog. I send the giveaway to the winner. I would not send anything to anyone else.

[AnnaSiivonen]

I thing it would feel better to do it that way

[MiloandMolly]

Yes, a giveaway is a free item sent to a random winner, kind of like a raffle. They usually come with some kind of interview/spotlight of the shop owner. Then you send the item directly to the winner. I have one going on right now if you want to see how it's set up.

http://bythebookpaper.blogspot.com

But I don't think I would send an item to a blogger unless I knew who they were.