Money and the Law of Attraction: PR Sarah v. Mommy Blogger

The “blogger’s should get paid” debate rages on with PR Sarah’s anonymous column From PR with Love featured on Mom Blog Magazine. In her post, Why PR People Get Paid and You Don’t , many bloggers reacted to her column with comments that were perhaps more interesting than the column itself.

Earlier this year, I took a stand on The Girl Revolution about this issue. After several years of doing free work for huge corporations (both on this blog and my former gig BlogFabulous with b5media), spending hours of my day reading entire books and writing comprehensive reviews of them, gathering Christmas gifts for my children that I realized I never would have chosen for them, I realized was working 40 hours a week and couldn’t pay my mortgage with my gross profits (ie: overpriced mascara, wrist wallets, books not worth reading, toys and books my children weren’t interested in, etc.). Couldn’t make a car payment, couldn’t put my kids in athletics, couldn’t buy anything I wanted or needed.

I took a stand with this button on my sidebar:

I wrote a form letter informing PR Reps that my time and talent was worth money and I have a new policy not to work for free and put it in my post, Nice Girls Don’t Talk About Money, I attempted to incite the Blogger Revolution, which SP Sarah pointed out in her column, is never going to happen, with my posts 10 Reasons Mommy Bloggers Deserve Condescension From The New York Times, and 10 Reasons Mommy Bloggers Are Broke.

Guess what happened?

My inbox finds itself blessedly void of PR folk asking me to hawk their wares on The Girl Revolution.  As PR Sarah points out, if there is no money in the budget, they can’t pay bloggers. I maintain, however, that companies budget for what they value and they evidently do not value bloggers. They have a budget, they just aren’t spending it on us.

Knowing that my Market Value to PR Reps, and companies they work for, was zero freed me in a lot of ways. It freed up the time I was spending responding to this form of email, the time I was spending doing reviews and giveaways. It also freed up the brain, creative and psychic energy it was taking me to both do the work and worry about how to get paid by PR people and companies.

With that extra time and energy I’ve focused on ways that I can and will make money on The Girl Revolution. I gestated and gave birth to The Girl Revolution out of love, and the love is still my motivating force. Honestly, though I find it extraordinarily invalidating to work for free. I also find it impractical considering I have two mortgages, two children, gas bills, light bills, etc. that must be paid.  Take a look at Law of Attraction and Money and see how it could be beneficial to you.

I have come up with some magnificent ideas. In 2011, The Girl Revolution will roll out some new things and I’m very, very excited about them. I’ll leave you guessing what they are right now, but I’ll hope that you’ll come back and show me the love I’ve shown you by writing for free for four years.

Bloggers, do yourselves a favor and stop working for free. PR folk aren’t going to see your value just because you ask them to. Seeing your value is your job. They wouldn’t expect to be displayed on a billboard for free just because they failed to budget for it. The “entitlement” issue PR Sarah brings up goes both ways. Companies and PR Reps are not “entitled” to free advertising on your blog.

Borrow my button if you’re sick of being used, it’s free.

<center><a href=”http://thegirlrevolution.com/10-reasons-mommy-bloggers-are-broke/”><img title=”girl-revolution-button” src=”http://thegirlrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/girl-revolution-button.gif” alt=”Mommy Blogger Will Work for MONEY – Take The Girl Revolution Challenge” width=”125″ height=”125″ /></a></center>

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