Rant: Bad Pitches 101

It’s ranting time again! It’s all inside baseball stuff for travelbloggers, as usual when I get my rant on. If you’d rather have something less ranty, here’s a really old post about taking the Night Watch Tour in Steyr, Austria.

Because I have so little time to blog (the irony is not wasted on me), my inbox is a source of great irritation lately. I’m weary of the same old bad pitches over and over and over, pitches that make it sound like “We are offering you an awesome deal!” Upon reading, I usually end up with a different interpretation. “We know the value of your voice, but we figure you have NO IDEA! You’re not very smart!”

Don’t get me wrong, there are fantastic, forward thinking people working with bloggers. But on bad days, I feel like the archetypal view of a blogger hasn’t evolved nearly enough to reflect the whip smart, business savvy, editorially committed, entrepreneurial bent that the occupation has acquired. We are still being wildly underestimated and, oh, I’ll just say it. I find that kind of insulting sometimes.

Yes, I’m probably taking this stuff much too seriously. Yes, I just hit delete, nine times out of ten. But sometimes, I need to hammer out a good rant. In the midst of the “We thought you’d like to tell you readers about…” and “Feel free to use this material and link back to us….” and “Participate in our link bait initiative…” junk mail, there are a handful of things that I’ve never quite been able to fully ignore. Here’s what they are and why they annoy me.

“We’ll give you free, written for your site content! All we ask is that you link back to…”

What’s wrong?  What this person really wants is text links back to their site from the meaty parts, the posts, of my site. This is money to the people that are “offering” that free content and the benefit to me is what, exactly? It’s advertising and it should be paid for.

“We’ll give you product/service. In exchange, you’ll write the following for us.”

What’s wrong? Well, in a barter economy, maybe nothing. But “You’ll observe our editorial requirements on your blog” is bad mojo. I won’t trade my editorial credibility for a night in a hotel, a pair of shoes, maybe something cool like a big trip. What’s my cred worth? What’s it tell my readers if I’m willing to give it up so easily?

These can be tricky to unravel, I recently had a retailer offer me some product to review; they wanted links to the retailer, not the product. That endorses the retailer, not the product. No can do.

Want to control the editorial? Hire me to work for you. I’ll happily write copy for your site and you can have all the oversight you want. Also, dude, take a risk. If your product/service is so awesome, why are you trying to control what I’ll say about it?

“We’ll host you at our destination, you simply need to get there.”

What’s wrong? Maybe nothing or maybe the out of pocket expenses don’t add up. I recently turned down one of these deals because it was going to cost me over 2000 dollars in out of pocket expenses and it came with editorial requirements (See above.) Thing is, if I’m going to drop a bunch of money on travel, it’s going to be under my terms. If it’s some place I really want to go and I can call the shots, this might be a great deal.

Most times, it’s a loser from a strictly business point of view. If I buy a plane ticket and walk away from tech work, I’m going to have to sell a lot of high ticket stories to get my cash layout back. Given the travel market, this is much easier said than done. I’m not dissing the value of an awesome experience at discount. But I have to make a living and operating at a loss is a bad business decision.

“We’d love to have you as a guest blogger.”

What’s wrong? If it’s one of my pals or a fledgling blogger, it might be just fine. But mostly, these requests come from a business asking me to work for free.  A commercial entity that uses their site to make money.  Do they have staff writers or freelancers? What are they getting paid? What am I getting out of the deal since you’re not offering me cash? This works if I have something I’m very clearly trying to promote — selling a book, writing about my service — I get free soft sell advertising. But I’ve rarely been able to find a good reason to guest post. As a writer, why wouldn’t I try to find a place to sell that story, instead?

I’ve given two, maybe three posts to National Geographic’s Intelligent Travel blog. It was a calculated move and I still think it’s wrong that I was not paid. It’s National Geographic, for crying out loud. Worth noting? They didn’t ask, I offered. Yeah, I’m an enigma.

“We’d love your feedback on our new site or app.”

What’s wrong? This is market research. I guess email is one way to source it, but my tech clients pull people in to labs and pay them for their time for exactly this kind of thing. Also, this kind of work is my bread and butter. My suspiciously titled day job is in the field of User Experience, this is how I make my living.

Don’t get me wrong, I like to see new tech toys, especially in travel.  If I have the leisure to spend an hour of conference call time to walk through something new and the company has recruited me personally for feedback, it’s likely I will. But I often respond to the anonymous requests for tech reviews with my resume. Interestingly enough, that ends the communication, which makes me wonder if they really did want feedback.

(Or, you know, they might just think I’m being obnoxious. They’d be right.)

“We’ll give you great exposure/an amazing platform/traffic to your site.”

What’s wrong? It’s nonsense, that’s what’s wrong. The host can’t guarantee they’ll deliver.  I’m not saying that it can’t happen, that something you post elsewhere can’t get picked up and become a Big Deal. I’m not saying that it won’t happen, it does.  What I’m saying is that no one can promise this.

Furthermore, most sites have very little incentive to drive traffic away from where their visitors are to you. Their primary motivation is to keep visitors right where they are. So what, exactly, are they promising in exchange for your efforts? How, exactly, will it drive back traffic? How much exposure do you project it will deliver and what, exactly, is exposure good for? Can I pay my dentist with that?

Exposure? You can die from exposure.

Image: Photographer’s bunker at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. Can you imagine, that’s where they were supposed to be safe from exposure to radiation. The mind boggles. From the Library of Congress image archives.