It’s been a LONG time since I’ve published a vent & gripe onto my blog, so today…I’m bringing it back and it’s on a topic that I feel very strongly about. This will be a lengthy post and I’m sure it will piss off some of those in the blogging world, but it’s something that needs to be said.
When I first started up my blogs back in 2009 and 2010, you saw blog author’s & publishers being honest with their readers when it came to product reviews and product recommendations. Just like all of you, I read and cruise many blogs and I’ve done so for many years. Matter of fact, I started blogging before blogging became cool.
However, over the past few years blogging has exploded and many people have jumped into mommy & lifestyle blogging. Yay, more the merrier. But, I’ve also seen things change and it hasn’t changed for the better.
Now when I cruise a lot of blogs, I’m totally appalled at some of the crap that I’m reading. Whatever happened to bloggers being honest with their readers? I can go to a ton of blogs, scroll through hundreds of their product reviews and find not a single NEGATIVE word said about a product that they’re reviewing and/or featuring. NOT A SINGLE WORD!
Your readers deserve the truth! They’re not dummies and they don’t believe that out of the past 100 products you’ve reviewed & featured that you loved 100% of them and loved everything about them. Come on now, like I said, readers are not stupid and it’s YOUR JOB to also point out any and all negatives that you find with XYZ product and you can do so in a tactful, but honest way. It’s NOT all about pleasing the company and/or brand. It’s about being HONEST!
The next thing on my “GRIPE LIST” is all of these phony article & affiliate lists that I see bloggers publishing. Here are a few examples of what I’m talking about:
My Top 10 Favorite New Beauty Products
My Top 7 Favorite Laundry Room Items
My Top 5 Favorite New Frying Pans
My Must-Have Bath & Body Products for Spring
My Top 12 New Toy Recommendations for Christmas
etc. etc. etc.
Here’s why I have a problem with these types of lists.
If you’re going to publish lists like this to drum up affiliate sales for yourself, you need to have personal hands-on experience with each & every product you’re recommending that your readers go out and buy. If you don’t, that’s false advertising and your readers deserve better. You should ONLY be recommending products to your readers that you have personal experience with. You have no right to mislead readers by making product recommendations if you have no experience with it. It’s just wrong!
I totally believe in monetizing your blogs. Heck, my blog is monetized too and yes, I do publish affiliate links. However, EVERY affiliate link you find on this blog, me or one of my writers have personally tried the product. We don’t write up articles, insert a slew of affiliate links, lie to our readers with phony product recommendations to try to make a sale. Come on, readers deserve better!!!
Furthermore, by law…if you’re a U.S.A. blogger, you must properly disclose when your blog posts and/or social media posts contain affiliate links. These days, I see way too many bloggers not including the disclosures. Readers do have the RIGHT TO KNOW when they’re clicking on an affiliate link. PERIOD. Enough said!
I’m sure with me blatantly speaking out on this topic, I’ll piss off some blogging friends and that’s okay. My loyalties lie with my readers and social media followers who count on me to give them my HONEST opinion and to properly disclose my affiliation to any product that I’m featuring. That’s right, I said it. MY LOYALTY IS TO MY READERS!
Those who regularly read The Classy Chics blog will tell you, we publish negative things within our reviews and we do so very tactfully as we realize that not all people will love all things. The important lesson: Be honest & build credibility with your readers!!!
To all of The Classy Chic blog readers: We promise to always give you our honest, 100% unbiased opinion on a product. We promise to always disclose when we’re using an affiliate link within a post. That you can count on.
I would love to hear some feedback from all you. Please keep your feedback CLASSY and CLEAN! Thanks!
I do trust your reviews and will not buy products that are reviewed unless i see some negative comment on some of the items reviewed. I did not know about the rafflecopter tweets which are their link.
I do trust your reviews and will not buy products that are reviewed unless i see some negative comment on some of the items reviewed. I did not know about the rafflecopter tweets which are their link.
I have read blogs from all over also. I read one just the other day about one of these subjects ie: honest reviews. Many said they wouldnt publish and the sponsor wouldnt want them to publish unless it was positive. I really dislike this, and see it as dishonest. Some will buy a product upon the opinion of someone and the product turns out not to work as it was advertised . I see it as false advertising
And affiliate links…. youre right about that.
I have been seeing new tactics, and one hard to spot and one that is underhanded. It works like this: it is rafflecopter usually, and the tweet you send is actually their link to gain more entries. You will never win, as you are sending out their link.
Another gripe is the HUGE prizes and no one announcing or if they do, you find out it is someone who should not have won – like a blogger who appears in the raffleecopter or whatever widget under a different name.
I have followed you all for a long time. I trust you all and your reviews. Keep your head high, you re all well respected by your readers and any sponsor is lucky to get you.
Ellen
I wrote a post on this very topic that will be published next week. In a nutshell, our policy is this: To mention the negative viewpoints (in a tactful, but professional manner) along with the positives. If my staff can’t find anything positive to say about a product (and I mean anything positive) we do contact the company & let them decide if they want us to publish the review. With that said, if that occurs and the company elects for us to not publish, we will NOT work with that company or brand again. If they can’t allow us to be honest with our readers, then we don’t want to work with them again on anything else.
I know what you mean. I will NOT tweet out any type of link that benefits someone else’s odds in winning something. I will NOT publish or tweet out affiliate links that are NOT related to this blog, to just benefit someone else.
One thing you will NEVER EVER find on this blog is these “voting giveaways” and bribery being used to garner those votes. We’re pitched all of the time to enter such & such recipe contest or such and such home decor makeover contest where they will provide us with the ingredients and/or products. We are then to drive our readers to VOTE on our & other people’s creations by giving them extra entries to do so. That’s shady in my opinion. I will NOT give readers extra entries to go vote on something that I’m participating in. If I win, I want it to be on my own merit and not because I bribed my readers to go vote for me with extra bonus entries in a giveaway. IT’s shady as all crap and it’s NOT fair to the other bloggers/entrant into that contest…but yet, You’ll find a crap load of bloggers giving out these bonus entries if their readers go vote for them. Let me tell you why this is shady.
Let’s say I make recipe XYZ and the other blogger makes recipe ABC. The blogger who gets the most votes wins a new grill. But…let’s say that my recipe is 100% more creative & tastes better, but I have smaller readership than her and I won’t bribe my readers w/the extra entries to go vote for me. That other blogger will BRIBE readers w/the extra entries and she’ll win even though her recipe was lack-luster. I would still lose b/c I won’t do the bribing or be deceptive. So in reality…the person with the best recipe that was most creative loses. Hence, I won’t participate in that garbage and I won’t bribe The Classy Chics readers to go vote for me. Enough Said.
And thats exactly why you have loyal readers who trust you and will stay with you as long as you and your gals choose to be here .
There are few like you, and trust me we know it.
I too have been reading your blog for many, many, many years and I trust your reviews on products. I also love that you include what you didn’t like about the product. I TOTALLY agree with you about some of these other bloggers being FULL of it. They just say everything is soooo wonderful so they keep the freebies coming to them. One blog that I used to visit, I repeat used to visit, was doing a review on a certain rash cream. Well, she got busted because she posted a picture of her child’s leg with the rash on it and then the “After” picture was of the child’s other leg poof with no rash – yeah… because it the other leg!!! This same blogger seems to also “cherry pick” her giveaway winners so obviously the Rafflecopter folks were notified. I had no idea that there were blogging laws. Thank you for this great rant I have missed them so much. Have a great night and thank you for all of your hard work – love you guys.
I’m happy to hear that that blogger was busted for his/her deceptive ways. We need to hear more people being called out for their deceptive practices. Just like any business industry (yes, blogging is a business when you make money off of it), there are bad apples and I’m tired of those bad apples giving this profession a bad name.
You would be ASTONISHED if you knew how many bloggers “cherry pick” their winners. Seriously, it would disgust you! Back when I used to enter giveaways (heavily) on many different blogs I saw all kinds of underhanded things. In the past 2 years, I saw 2 blogs totally go under because they were busted for picking various family members and/or friends as the winners of their giveaways. It took readers 2 years to catch on and once they did, they opened up their mouths, reported their suspicions to brands/companies who were working with them and they were done.
You can tell when deceptive winner practices are going on when the same handful of people are winning all of the top value prizes, while the majority of the other winners are getting the inexpensive prizes. It’s easy to figure out if you scroll posts, look for the winner’s names on the rafflecopter or giveaway tools widget and make notes. Time consuming…yes…but it can easily be figured out.
There is one particular blog that’s been around for years where her & her writers use 80% copy/paste content in their posts (lazy writers) and the majority of the photos on that blog are stock images. The reviews are so fake when you read wording that was in their original email pitch that has then been copy/pasted into their blog posts. You can tell when something was written by a PR firm, pitch company or company/brand and these bloggers are even too lazy to delete it out of the pitch email before they copy/paste it onto the blog LOL
Any blogger that slapping up a dozen posts a day (review, giveaways & sponsored posts) is a spammer if you ask me. That same blog that I mentioned has a few “contributors” and they all copy/paste the pitch content out of the emails they received & put it into their blog post (review) and only add 3-4 sentences at the bottom “My thoughts” which is a total joke! You rarely see any original photos of the item being used because a lot of these types of folks are re-selling for profit. Deceptive indeed!
I’m hoping that exposing more light on this issue will help to expose it. Hopefully those who read blogs will stop visiting these deceptive blogs…even for a chance to win XYZ. By continuing to visit & enter giveaways on the deceptive blogs, you’re keeping them in business. Just Saying.
I’ve been reading The Classy Chics for several years & I do trust your reviews. I look at a lot of blogs, though, & you’re right. Quite often, it’s obvious they are just praising something because they are getting paid or receiving the item or offering a giveaway of it. No on LOVES everything, lol. But you wouldn’t know it from some bloggers, ha. All I can say, as a reader, is we learn who we can trust. It doesn’t help other blogs to do dishonest reviews –in the long run, they lose the trust of their readers.
As a blogger & writer, I’m just very disgusted with what I’m seeing. As someone who produces quality & honest material, I feel our loyalty (at least on my site) is to the readers…not to the companies & brands. People come to this blog to gather information, to read HONEST reviews & opinions. They don’t come here to be deceived! My readers are not “cash cows” and we don’t look at our readers as a way to make a quick buck. It’s just wrong. No matter how you slice it, what’s going on with numerous blogs (way too many to count) is WRONG.