Over on the MomDot forum recently, one of our members stated how she was reported to Etsy for spam when she approached an artisan she enjoyed and asked them for a feature on her blog, including a product giveaway. After some lengthy discussion, this very interesting thread bashing bloggers all to pieces came to light.

I was going to post a response there, but thought I would post here so it would open up my feelings on the subject if we happen to have any from Etsy stopping by. It appears that Etsy believes, at least 10 pages of posts worth, that blogs are only out for free products, they do all the work, and receive nothing in return. In fact, there were many strong feelings about how Etsy owners were frustrated at being asked by “no name” bloggers or bloggers under a Page Rank of “4″.

I kinda get a giggle out of it to tell you the truth…I mean, lets face it, if you’re on Etsy aren’t you kinda in that whole non mainstream world as well? Its not like Vera Wang set up shop there and we all want a wedding dress. Someone even stated that “if you’re not Oprah or In style magazine” you shouldn’t be asking. With that attitude Oprah will never even know who you are. You have to crawl before you can walk.

From a boutique perspective:

You may or may not know that I own a boutique online. I do not push it here but it has been established for 17 months, bringing me an alternative source of income and a creative outlet. I started it before I started blogging on a more serious basis, but I was not ignorant to online marketing in the slightest. When you start a business you have 2 choices…or maybe three. You can wait for the search engines to catch you and pray out of the 1 million people struggling online someone will find you and purchase. You can pay for ads via google and other online advertising resources without knowing what kind of results that will yield you (other then income out of your pocket) or you can donate products to blogs in exchange for advertising.

I prefer the latter and let me explain why. In the beginning I came across a few blogs that I personally enjoyed their reviews and asked them to review my product. I was flattered when they said yes. I ran a few giveaways and a few reviews. Not only did I notice my traffic increased, but my google ranking increased little by little. By already established blogging websites talking about me, I started gaining more momentum in Yahoo and Google, thereby being noticed more often, and all of a sudden my traffic REALLY started coming in. Even better, my sales were up and I was “somebody”. In under three months of my business being online, I was in 28 stores in the United States. In fact it there was  so much interest that I backed off and stopped all dropshipping and retail accounts (with the exception of one relationship that I have with a company I love). I can say that my sales themselves didn’t come  from the bloggers talking about me. Stores found me because of the search engines. The search engines found me because of the blogs links.

And yes, there will always be bloggers that take products and never respond back (been there), ask for too many products at once (been there), and my personal favorite, refuse to run a giveaway if they don’t have a review. I think all of those things give bloggers a bad name and are ultimately unsuccessful for the blog or the boutique owner.

But the majority of bloggers are NOT like that. Most provide quality pictures, reviews, testimonials and sometimes even more importantly, feedback from themselves and their visitors. I even found that blogs were a great way for me to boost my guest book reviews and offer places for my visitors to go get an independent review regarding my product (ie press link).

What Etsy sellers are not seeing is the massive potential to reach an audience that would never be exposed to their product and also provide themselves with ways to work on internally embedding their links into posts around the web, which will in turn give them authority in the search engine on their product.

If you type in “hair bow holder, hairbow holder, hair bow holders, and hairbow holders” on google, I will be on the front page of all four of those key words.

How did I get there?

Blogs.

Tips for Etsy and Small Business owners:

Giving up a product review to a blog owner is a strong investment:  Unlike an ad, a blog post never “expires” and will never need a renewal fee. Your link will remain static inside that blog as long as the blog stays online. You create a true testimonial from an independent source. If you run a review on a review blog, their visitors come specifically to read product reviews, therefore you are likely to also find buyers.

Giving up a product for a contest is a strong investment: Blog owners can advertise the contest and freebie to bring in contest traffic. It also generates more excitement about your product when someone has a chance to possibly win it. In a contest, you can ask other bloggers to link to the product owners page or blog about the contest, bring in even more links without giving up product. You can make one strong blog work for you in literally 100 back-links.

Blogs can also provide you with:

• Instant exposure
• a competitive edge
• introduction as a major player in your product field by being noticed
• consumer feedback on your site or your product via their own visitors (which is invaluable).

I want to clear up a few misconceptions as well.  One person said:

	DreamsandJewelry says:
	One way to protect yourself is to look at their page rank.. http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php Blogs with a page rank of 4 and above get good traffic and have a good ranking..anything less than that is not worth your time until they improve their ranking..

Page ranks have nothing to do with traffic or comments. Page ranks are a very intricate formula that google has come up with to adjust pages on the search engines, and encompass a great deal many things, none of which can tell you how popular a blog may actually be. For example, John Chow is a major online blogger who has over 15,000 feedburner subscribers and over 5,000 twitter followers and only has a “3″. Getting on his site would be amazing for any business. (john, feel free to quote me) My Charming Kids has a page rank of 4, and in the 3 days we were listed on the front page of her site, saw an increase of 7,000 unique visitors to our page nearly overnight. The traffic we saw from her site, tripled our own personal daily traffic, although we share the same page rank.

We currently have a page rank of ‘4′ , Google readjusts page ranks every 3 months. We can not change a thing and be taken to a 2 in one second…Google also punishes bloggers who utilize paid advertisement posts and you can find a well qualified, well trafficked blog that has a lower page rank simple due to that alone. Second, its difficult for blogs to obtain a PR above 5. Perez Hilton has a ‘7′ and the most popular online mommy blogger Heather Dooce Armstrong has a ‘7′. So please make no mistake that a blog that has a page rank of ‘4′ may also be picking YOU.

Second, comments on a blog do not also always equal visitors. A blog is really like a book for many..or a newspaper. They stop by, read, and leave. I have articles that have sparked 50 comments and some sparking 1. But that wouldn’t tell you that almost 40,000 people have come to this blog this month at the time this article was written and we are just short of 100,000 page views so far.

I want to respond to this:

	SycamoreMoonStudios says:
	I don’t see any national mega produced brands doing decent giveaways, and they have a big enough base to do so without feeling the pinch. When a major designer sends me some cool clothing (size medium, please), I will compensate them with a wool sculpture. Hear me, Versace?

Big companies DO use bloggers every day…look up. I would guess that we have given away over $15,000 worth of products easily since July last year and worked with over 500 companies.

Smart companies use bloggers. They use them for consulting, social networking, branding, and finding out what the world thinks about their company. Motrin listened to bloggers in an outpouring recently. Walmart has a panel full of them. So does McDonalds and Disney. We host a blog panel for Dyson vacuums. From Leap Frog to Hoover, from Keurig to Adobe, smart companies sponsor bloggers. Smart companies put their product into the hands into the one source that people go to everyday to find out about a product…the Internet.

This is from today:

I also wanted to respond to this:

	rtisan says:
	The giveaways I have seen are to boost readership of blogs, which therefore leads to more paid advertising on their blogs. It’s just shameful to take advantage of etsy sellers to make an income for yourself.
	Posted at 1:30 pm, December 29 2008 EST – Report this post

Yes, contests can bring in traffic, but it doesn’t really up my readership and its not that valuable. It only allows the companies I work with additional exposure and to hopefully reward someone who does happen to visit with an occasional prize.

I think its kinda sad that the viewpoint would be that bloggers are trying to “take advantage” of anyone with any business, when in fact, writing a review is something most bloggers  invest quite a bit of time into.While blogging is a hobby for many, its a hobby they take very seriously and blogs that deal with companies, as a whole, tend to have a strong degree of professionalism and want to provide a service back to their visitors as well.

Check out our full review page. We have 6 reviewers on staff and they thoroughly test out a product, put in pictures, links, sometimes video, and its not just throw up a post to get free product. I cant speak for the other girls, but my reviews takes days to test and more than an hour to write effectively. If I am also giving a product away, I am investing another hour in advertising that contest and putting up contest rules. I am also giving up premium front page above the fold spots to someone….for “free”. And for the record, while we do take some paid ads, I do not view reviews or contests as a way to increase ad sales in the slightest, nor is that the goal of the blog. And make no mistake, not every review that hits my desk makes it to the blog. If its substandard, it doesn’t get used. I take my blog as seriously as you take your business.

More for small businesses:

• 1) Look at bloggers past reviews and find out how they test their products, how long, did they provide pictures or video. Just like a magazine article, find out what works with your company and go with someone with traffic likely to appeal to your product.
• 2) Ask your blogger for a copy of their Blogs or Vlogs for your own advertising… add video to newbaby.com or youtube
• 3) Def. ask for statistics on their blog, unique visitors and such. But don’t put too much stock in Page rank, technorati, or alexa ratings…most online ratings can be manipulated very easily and likewise, bloggers that are strong can be ranked lower when they are just as qualified. If a blogger has 100 visitors a day, that’s 2800 people that can view your product, not bad if you make something under $20
• 4) If you’re an unknown business, help an unknown blogger. Sometimes life is about give and take. You also have no idea if that blogger is connected socially to other sites. You cannot just judge by comments on a website.  And on the flip side, many well known bloggers are not going to just take your product and test it for you or talk about it…they want you to prove your worth as well and work your way up to them. Their time is just as valuable and yes, they will let you know it. Has Oprah called you back yet? Right.

My take is that its time that Etsy and Ebay opened their eyes to social networking and realize the importance of having an online base. You can’t be successful if no one knows who you are. Bloggers are not scammers. Bloggers tend to be entrepreneurs as much as online business owners are and have the same dreams and same goals.

By working together, both sides have much to offer one another….presence and credibility.

~Trisha