Support Influencers With Adverts – It’s Their Job!

 

I have had this post building up inside of me for a very long time. I am so saddened by the uprising that shames ‘influencers’ for advertising, and this is my plea to you, asking you to support anyone who runs adverts, because it’s their job!

 

Support Influencers With Adverts – It’s Their Job!

There is so much hate out there when it comes to influencers. Forums often describing influencers as selling their lifestyle online, ‘using’ their families as a way to make easy cash and so on. Well, here’s a bit of a reality check, blogging is damn hard if you want to make money. It (very) rarely happens overnight, and every blogger I know has to dedicate time to their business. And yes, it is a business!

To start this post off, I want to remind every single judgemental person out there, how bloody hard it is to get a job after having kids. Unless you go back straight from maternity, the chance of landing a job is pretty slim. Even if you do go back from maternity, it can be a difficult transition, with specific requests for shifts or hours weighing heavy on most parents. On top of this, it’s usually (but not always) mothers who have to try to find a job that fits around school, or figure a way to pay for childcare.

 

My history…

George and Molly were in school for a short time, before they started I worked in a beauty salon, but the hours were incredibly long, I was treated like cr** for being the oldest and least beautified, and I couldn’t always find childcare. Once they’d started school, I got a job for a jewellery company, working around Zoey’s hours, but this was always a tight call (I was up early, she was at work by midday) and it was always by the skin-of-your-teeth living. This, coupled with the store’s refusal to let me use their staff toilet, led me to quitting this job and wholly focusing on my book.

When we removed them from school (for SO many reasons), I couldn’t find any work to fit around Zoey’s and my mother’s hours. In the end I focused on home education, my blog (to earn money in my own time and allow us luxuries we couldn’t afford) and my book took a back seat.

I worked (and still do work) hard on my blog. I work late at night, I work whenever there’s a snippet of time, I work whilst the family sleeps, so I can try to earn money in a world that doesn’t really work for parents.

I know so many people struggling to either:

a. Find a job that works around school

b. Find work after having a child

 

So, when a parent writes about parenting, documenting their journey, offering advice, moaning, sharing products, and it turns into a job, why aren’t people proud of them?!!!!

We’re trying to make this online thing work so we can make it through each day, week and year without having to kill ourselves or take to the food banks. We have to work hard to reach our audience, we have to file tax returns, chase invoices, wait up to 45 days to get paid. We go on lovely adventures, attend amazing events, and have amazing opportunities, but when we get home we have to turn that experience into an article, with well written words, edited photos and more. We have to prove to brands that people are listening.

When we state ‘AD’ on our posts, it’s because we don’t want to break the law. We want to be transparent, we want to be honest, but we also want to feed our kids.

And for those of you who say we use our kids for this, know one thing… I pay my kids! I pay them with product or cash, and I ask them their permission each and every time, for each and every photo.

Sometimes they say no, and I wonder, ‘How am I going to pull this off?!’. One time Molly refused to work with me because the product she’d received was pink, so she doesn’t appear in any of the photos for that review. Luckily George agreed and we pulled it off, but it wasn’t easy.

I know this hasn’t always been the case, when they’re young, you can’t really get ‘permission’, but you know what? Neither do parents of child models, or parents who ‘make’ their kids go to nursery or school, or dress a certain way, or enter baby contests or talk about their kids in online forums, I could go on…

I also know for a fact I’m teaching my kids the following:

• Work ethics
• Self employment
• Negotiation skills
• Time management
• Confidence
• Photography, video and editing skills (mine aren’t great, but their generation will kill it!)
• Independance
• Choice
• So much more!

We’re not perfect, we make mistakes and we get judged daily for them, but we’re also human. Not supporting your friends, or taking to forums to slate bloggers is just so sad. I really don’t understand either, because I support my friends in whatever they do in life, and I certainly don’t have the time (or spite) to talk about people’s lives in such horrid ways in public forums.

So support your friends. Support the mother whose honesty you actually really love. Support the blogger who is getting paid to advertise nappy rash cream because blogging actually works for her, when no other job could offer her work around her kids. Start supporting the mums and dads who work in all those spare hours, because the system is actually failing them.

I am asking begging you, if you have a blogger pal, or you follow bloggers on social media, when you see that little ‘AD’ on their posts, remember what it’s for. It’s honesty, integrity, it’s telling you the truth. But, on top of that, it’s that person’s livelihood, just like a plumber advertising their services, or an ad you’d see on telly, it’s all business, and that’s not a bad thing.

Stop singling out bloggers for adverts when, in reality, adverts are all around you, you just haven’t noticed them yet…