Are you a blogger looking for more ways to make money with your blog, you’ve thought about sponsored posts. You’ve, seen other bloggers make a lot of money through sponsored posts, but you ‘ Ve, never really been able to wrap your head around what they are.
Maybe you, don’t know where to look for them. How much to charge what to actually offer the companies to do sponsorships with well today, my name is Calvin Klein and I’m, going to show you exactly what sponsored posts are and kind of give you an overview of everything you need to know To get started making money with them so without further ado, let’s get started so today’s, lesson how to land sponsored posts.
Now, if you don’t know me, I am the owner behind the savvy couple. Calm and through sponsored posts, we’ve, really been able to increase our revenue quite a bit over the last year, or so. We’ve, been able to land multiple sponsored posts over ten feet or I’m.
Sorry over ten thousand dollars through one sponsorship, so we definitely know what we’re doing it’s kind of our specialty in a way to make money with our blog. So I want to kind of share with you all the tips and tricks and knowledge that we have so that you can go ahead and be successful with your blog through sponsorships.
So so let’s start with what our sponsors post, so sponsored posts are basically marketing partnerships between you and another company. It can be to spunk it can be to market their products, their services and kind of just get them brand awareness, and a really good way to think about.
This is thinking about professional athletes and partnering, with brands such as Nike, so LeBron James. He’s, partnered with Nike, he wears all their stuff and he is a brand ambassador or an influencer for their product and service, so basically that he promotes their product and service for them and he gets paid to do so now.
How can you do sponsored posts like what are they so sponsored posts are just the one thing it’s, it’s, a post that you write up on your on your blog. It’s, an article that you write for your blog for the company and you’re, basically promoting their product and service.
So what I like to do is when I reached out to brands – and I’m gonna get into how to do that. I like to offer a marketing campaign, which is basically an entire campaign, with lots of different marketing strategies to kind of increase my revenue and give the brand as much value as possible.
So you can start with just a blog post and that’s. Just gonna be you know something that you write up. Maybe a review or just something creative to market. That company that you’re working with you can also do social media.
So you can share posts. You can do social media amplification, which means taking the post that they already have on their site and just kind of promoting it with your own social media reach. You do email, marketing, videos, Facebook lives, paid advertising, they love paid advertising because it’s.
So targeted, so if you’re good with Facebook ads, you can really make a lot of money through sponsorships with companies. It’s literally endless that’s. What’s? Fun about sponsored posts? Is you can get super creative in marketing with other companies and it’s? Fun because you can kind of really run with it as long as you stay within their budget so and we’re gonna talk about that as well.
So these can pay so sponsored post sponsorships marketing campaigns. These are all under the same umbrella. You’re, helping a brand increase, their brand awareness and hopefully drive sales for them, and they can pay anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to thousands when we first started.
Our first sponsorship was like 50 dollars and we totally got screwed. I’m gonna tell you about how much you should actually be charging for these in the next couple slides here, so why sponsored posts now? Why would a brand want to work with a influencer because influencer marketing just works? You already have the reach with your own blog or your own brand.
Maybe you have a huge following on Instagram or you have a blog that gets paid tons of pageviews per month. You have a warm audience, so people that come and follow you your audience. They’re already warm.
They trust you so when you promote something they’re, going to really trust that you’re, promoting something that is high quality and provides value, and you already have that trust factor so brands that partner with these influencers they’re already going to a warm audience so someone this audience that already similar to what they have, but it’s already warmed up by the influencer and they’re ready to you know, make a purchase or subscribe to their service Because the influencer has already made that trust in that connection with them.
Now why would you want a new sponsor post super high ROI on your time, so return on investment if you land a sponsored post for say thousand dollars, and they want one sponsored post in a few social media promotions for the sponsor posts? If you look at it, how much time that’s gonna take you it might take you a couple hours to put the sponsored post together, maybe 30 minutes to put the social shares together.
You’re, talking, making a hundred dollars an hour or more so. The ROI on your time is absolutely insane and it’s, really good cash flow for your business and what’s cool? Is you get to work with companies and brands that you love and that’s, really cool? So you can get free products just like blogging.
You can work from anywhere, so you can be camping, you can be traveling and you can land the sponsored post these sponsorships and still be making money, and you get to be creative in us as creators as blog owners and online business owners.
It’s very fun to get creative with your marketing, so it’s. Another way to use your creativity now where to find these sponsorships, one of my favorite ways to do this is to go on competitors, websites and basically search for sponsorships or sponsored content.
So I’m gonna show you how to do that. Really! Quick one of our good friends Michele over at making sense of sense. She has a similar audience to hers and she is absolutely amazing at landing sponsorships.
So I use her website quite often and just come on here and go into the search bar here and really just clicks or a really search sponsored. So I click I already did this. I’m searching so now I’m gonna look for content that at the top it says this was a sponsored post by such and such company.
So the following is a sponsored post, buy, sell, sell calm so that’s, a sponsored post. I might take this company look into them, see if it’s, something that we would want to work with and put them into a Google Doc to save for later to reach out to, and you can kind of just go through all your competitors Or people with similar audience than you so following post following is a sponsorship with H & amp R block.
So I know that she works with H & amp R Block. They’re, a huge company and they probably have huge pockets for marketing campaigns, and then it looks like appSumo sponsored posts, so she ‘ S worked with a lot of sponsored brands which is really cool, so it’s.
A really good idea to just go on to other sites that you look up to and figure out who they’re working with, because those companies are obviously out looking for influencers to kind of market, their products and services.
Another way is to find influencer networks there’s, a ton I’m, actually going to have a post in the description on where to find all these and it’s. A long post I put on fin con-com and it kind of has a layout of all of the influencer networks that we’ve used and found success with, but some of our favorites are real.
Clever, calm, active social and isiah calm. Excuse me, and what’s cool about these? Is they have a ton of different types of sponsorships? So a lot of them are social share, sponsorships which we do quite often on our Twitter in Facebook, and they pay anywhere from 50 dollars up to 100 dollars for a single post, which is absolutely insane, because I can throw together a Twitter promotion in ten minutes And make a hundred dollars so again, tracking your hourly rate and your ROI on your time huge.
So it’s, really cool to kind of land. These sponsorships influencer networks are really cool and a great way to kind of jump into this, especially when you’re small. When you’re just getting started, and you only have say a thousand page views a month, a small email list or small social following these influencer networks are really good to try to pick up some smaller sponsorships and as you grow and get bigger.
Obviously, you can increase your price on what you’re gonna pay, and I’m gonna talk about that in the next slide. I believe, but another thing is, you can do cold search and outreach, so we have a list on Google back of just hundred brands that we want to work with that.
We absolutely love that we know our audience would find you full and valuable from and every so often I have a task in our project management, software asana. That says, sponsored post outreach and I just go through take an hour or so and reach out to these brands.
So I’ll, go on their websites, try to find their PR email, so public relations or advertising email try to get to the right person and give them our media kit and just start the talk on. We want to start a partnership together and we’re interested in doing sponsored, post or social media campaign kind of just get connected with the right person and get talks moving forward on working together and then another thing is a lot of inbound emails.
We get, I would say, 75 % of our sponsorships come from inbound emails and that’s, because we have a very easy way to find us on our website and work with us. We have an advertised page, which I will show you.
So I’m gonna back out real quick. I’m gonna show you the advertised page right now, so here’s, our advertise with us page. It’s found on the bottom here. So anyone trying to find us is quickly and easily able to go to our advertised page, and it basically just tells a little bit about who we are some website stats, that we have our social media following demographic of who we serve and who our audiences and Then some ways that we kind of do these partnerships together, so companies are very easily able to come here, see us get our email and start that conversation with us, like, I said I would say, 75 % of the sponsorships that we land come inbound, which is Awesome because I don’t leave the work to cold reach for them.
Another good example of this in a different niche, so we’re in the personal finance niche. This is more of the food. Obviously pinch of young and Lindsay here has an awesome website and she does a lot of sponsorships with food brands, but again really really nicely laid out brands that they worked with.
This makes me want to update ours quite a bit, and it just looks really good and easily able to find and connect with Lindsay to set up that sponsorship with so how to land the sponsors post. I would say when you’re first, starting out it’s, gonna be harder to land sponsored post.
If you only have a thousand pages a month or you’re under 10,000 pages month. Maybe you know I’m, a big social media following like I said those influencer networks are gonna, be really key, because brands are more likely to work with you through those, because those are the ones that are already reaching out you don’t want to reach out to these big brands.
If you don’t have a good following. Yet you want to save that, for when you do so, you can get paid tons of money and really build that relationship to have repeat sponsored posts with them in sponsorships.
So I would apply to as many that fit your audience. So always always always think about your reader first and never work with someone that never work with a brand that doesn’t provide value to your audience, so this is really important.
You don’t want to lose trust with your audience. It takes forever to build that up and you want to serve them correctly. If you’re, not you’re gonna run out of business very quickly, so definitely apply to as many as you can then fit your brand and fit your audience to provide value through those so influence their networks, and you want To make sure that your blog and medium kit look very professional, so I have our media kit here.
I’m, going to show you a couple media kits that look very professional, and I’m, also going to show you the home page here, so we’ve been doing this for almost three years now, so are we’ve, definitely become a long way.
It takes a while to build a blog like this, and you got to remember that it just takes brick after brick to kind of build it. But you want your blog to look professional. If you’re working with these brands, they’re, not gonna work with you.
Unless you’re. Looking professional, I’m gonna. Have our heat map on right now. Sorry about that, but you know our homepage looks very professional: it’s, nice and clean and laid out. They know exactly what we’re all about professional and then we’re gonna go to our media kit.
So a media kit is basically a way to send a brand, just like our advertised page, just a little bit more clean with more information and it’s, just a way to showcase that you know what the heck you’re.
Talking about your professional, you’ve worked with brands before and if you haven’t that’s perfectly, you just want to put together a nice clean way for brands to know who you are what you’Re about who your audience is your social media stats all that type of stuff so that they can kind of get a good idea if you’re gonna be a good fit to work with.
So we have our logo here, Britney and I and our about us about our audience and blog stats. I got ta update that quite a bit and that so this needs to be updated. This is an older media kit, just as an example, we have our social media following or handles so they can go on and look and see they can see what our website looks like and we had a graphics designer.
I’m. Sorry, our website developer make this for us, because we are not this good at graphic design, so it ‘ S might be something to outsource on Fiverr. If you’re, not the best with graphics, but you can use canva powerpoint any free service and you can put together a PDF that looks pretty nice.
So again we have a branded content. Our social advertising performance advertising, we’ve, been featured on these sites and who we’ve worked with, so we’re, just building that value for the brand and letting them know that we are super professional.
We’ve done this before we know how to market and working with us is gonna, be a good idea for them. So another example, our friends, Jeff and Bennett Dollar sprout Jeff – is absolutely incredible, with graphic design through PowerPoint.
So he made this through PowerPoint and it just looks really clean and concise and again it just shows how professional they are. They’re gonna be very good to work with so sponsor posts, cpa marketing paid social, what they offer and if you’re interested reach out.
So those are a couple media kits like I said it’s. Just a bait, basically a snapshot of what your business is all about and how to look professional when you are talking to brands, so they’re gonna ask for that.
Probably right off the bat I usually don’t, send it send it until they show interest in working with us, and then I say: hey here’s, our media kit. Please have a look, and let us know if you have any questions super excited to work with you type of stuff.
So I ‘ Ve got an easy contact to reach out. You want to have an advertised page and your email easily accessible on your website and make it all about the company with your outreach emails. So you don’t want to talk about yourself.
You want to talk about the company and how much value you’re gonna bring to them, and you want to find the right person to talk to so that they are the person in charge that decides how they do their marketing, which takes A little bit of time, when you’re, doing cold outreach, you might have to go through a couple of people to get to the right person.
But again you want to talk about the company and explain what they’re looking or try to figure out what they’re, looking for what their marketing budget is and what their needs are. So if they’re. Looking to do marketing with influencers, what are they actually looking for, then? Are they just wanting brand awareness? Do they just want to get their brand in front of your audience and your reach, or do they want sales and do they want to do kind of like it cost or cost per acquisition? So maybe each to do like an affiliate program with you with the sponsorship, but those are two totally different things I don’t want to get you confused.
My throat is extremely dry. Sorry, so throughout what companies needs are brand awareness, conversions, traffic? What are they looking for once you find out, this is just like any sale and negotiation once you find out what they’re looking for, then you can put together a proposal and kind of give that to them, and, like I said you can Go back to a couple, slides and figure out what type of stuff you can offer blog posts.
Social media shares, email, marketing, paid advertising. Facebook lives, Instagram stories, Instagram posts, all that type of stuff you get to be creative. Once you figure out what the brand’s budget is their marketing budget.
They’re interested in working with you and what their needs are, and then you can write up a little proposal on a one sheet piece of paper. That explains what you’re, looking to do and kind of what your feet would be to do it.
When you’re doing this and you’re reaching out to brands, you have to be confident. You can’t, be willy nilly and not really know what you’re talking about. So it takes practice, and I kind of just jumped right in that’s kind of how I am don’t, really sit back and wait to learn stuff after I learn it.
I jump in and I learned by doing and failing so there was plenty of people I’ve reached out to and probably burn bridges, and I just didn’t lame, a sponsored post and that’s. Fine so start with smaller companies.
You don’t burn the bridges with the bigger ones, but it takes practice. You’re, not gonna be perfect at this right off the bat so be able to put yourself out there and don’t be afraid to fail at first how much to charge.
So this is a big one. One thing I like to do, and this has really increased our revenue per sponsorship – is, I always always ask for their budget before giving any of our prices. Now you need to treat this like a negotiation, so just like you’re going out to buy a used car and someone they have the price you’re, not gonna tell them a price that you’re willing To pay you’re gonna ask what’s, the? What’s, the lowest you could take for this, or what are you willing to give this away for or how many other people are interested? You? It’s, a negotiation, so you want to figure out where they’re at and hopefully go a little bit above that and then meet somewhere in the middle.
So we’ve had plenty of times where I ‘ Ve actually doubled our revenue by simply making them state their price first. So what is your budget? And sometimes it takes a couple emails back and forth and it gets a little awkward because we’re playing that game where no one wants to say it.
First, that’s. Fine! They’re, showing a lot of interest in you, be bold and go for it go get what you’re worth, and you’ll figure that out the more you go so always ask for the budget. First, before giving your prices, I have a price reference sheet which is kind of like what I know that we’re worth and I don’t go below that.
So at the bottom. Here it says now we don’t charge under or we won’t work with people under two hundred under two thousand five hundred ollars, so we put together a marketing campaign. We don’t work with anyone under two thousand five hundred dollars, because we’ve practiced this.
We have very good marketing skills and we know that we’re worth that, so it’s, just something you’re gonna get a feel for, and I don’t have a price sheet that I Give these people – I always use it as negotiation, and just have it in the back of my mind.
Okay, if they want this many social shares. This is how much I’d like to they want to blog posts. This is how much I’m gonna charge, so that stays with us. It doesn’t really go to them now. One thing: if you’re just getting started.
Even if you started a month ago, don’t ever charge under $ 200. You’re gonna grow and their content that’s on their site is always going to get traffic. It should there’s kind of a gray area on how long sponsored post should stay on your site.
We kind of leave them on for at least a year, and then we can kind of take them off as we please. If they don’t fit our brand anymore or we’re working with them again and we want to republish the content, but that can all be in the contract.
And we’ll. Talk about that in the last slide. But we usually leave them up for at least a year, but, like I said you, don’t want to charge under two or 50 dollars, because you are worth that believe it or not.
Just for the brand awareness and getting in front of a different audience for the company social Bluebook. So this is a cool website. Haven’t used it in a while. So I don’t know. If it’s changed any much much, but you can join as a creator and kind of put in your your blog and link it to Google Analytics and all your social networks and it’s.
Gon na spit out a number of what you could charge for each type of sponsorship, so blog post social shares. Now we’ve known when we first started. We kind of relied on this quite a bit, but we realized that the way underpriced, what you’re worth, so I would almost double or triple even quadruple what social Bluebook says.
I think it still says that we can only charge like $ 800 per sponsor post, which is bogus so make sure that you kind of realize that they’re gonna undercut you and give you a fee or that you could charge way below What you actually can again goes back to the importance of treat this like a negotiation and be willing to ask what their budget is.
Another thing is asking other bloggers, so in the blogging community you’re gonna realize that everyone’s, friends and it’s, a very close-knit community, quick side. Note we have a blogging with purpose Facebook group it’s, probably the best blogging group on Facebook.
Please join us in the description, but you can ask bloggers and groups like that or blogging friends that you have. What do you charge for a sponsored post? What is it encapsulate, how much work you have to put into it and kind of get that feel for where you can charge, and then one thing I always like to do is calculate my hourly rate, so I depend so depending on how much I have to Put how much work I have to put into the sponsorship? Is it gonna be worth how much I believe I’m worth per hour.
If you’re, not gonna get paid enough, turn it down and believe it or not. I’ve, probably turned down 80 % of the sponsored requests that we get. You’re gonna get a lot of bogus bullcrap emails that you’re gonna, be able to tell very quickly that they’re bogus.
They’re, just looking for backlinks, which, on the next slide, we’re gonna talk about it, but you can’t. If you’re getting paid for a sponsorship, you cannot have a do, follow backlink. So basically, you can’t, so a company can’t pay you to put a do.
Follow, link on your back on your website that’s. It’s against Google’s, search engine rules and when you do that, you’re, you’re, putting yourself up for getting into trouble. So I’m gonna talk about that more in the next slide, but you want to make it a nofollow link.
Now that’s kind of more advanced blogging stuff you might not have heard of those before, but basically a do. Follow means that the link juice goes to that site and a nofollow means that they can click through and go to the site.
But you don’t, give any link juice to it, and when you’re working with brands or affiliates, they need to be nofollow links. So calculating net worth calculate your hourly rate and again practice practice makes perfect.
Put yourself out there get in front of a couple brands see what their budget is see. What they’re willing to pay you, and then you can kind of put your reference reach eat up, so how to get paid. Now that you’ve gotten in front of sponsors of different brands, maybe you’ve used the influencer networks or you’ve.
Had some cold outreach, you’ve done some competitor analysis and seen where companies that are similar to yours, but similar audiences are working with brands. Now you’re, you have an agreement together and it can be sometimes there’s a contract, a lot of times it’s, just an email back and forth, and I keep that thread saved and that’S basically, it’s like and shake you do this, and we’re gonna do this and we use that as our contract quite a bit, but basically try to get paid up front whenever you’re doing sponsorships, Like this, cash is king, it’s, always better to have cash flow.
Before you do the work, if you can ways to invoice our paypal QuickBooks or they can send you a live check, we’ve done all three and you can also do a wire transfer, which I try to stay away from, because I don’t like people having access to our bank accounts, so those are the three methods that we like the most and once you are agreed upon so say you’ve a negotiated, a marketing campaign for $ 1,000.
You can always ask for half up front and half later, which is what I would like to do. So we’ve had sponsorships that are $ 10,000. I asked for a check or PayPal or invoice them for five thousand before we even get started, because I want my cash or make sure I’m getting paid, so they’ll.
Give us half we’ll. Do all the work and then the second half we’ll invoice at the end of the sponsorship, so just a good rule of thumb always try to get paid upfront if you can and if not then negotiate half upfront half on the backend.
So let’s. Talk about the legal stuff. Now you must disclose every time you work with a brand, so at the top of the post, like you saw on Michelle’s website. This is a sponsored post with lexington law, or this is a sponsor’s post with Skillshare.
All opinions are 100 % our own, but you need to disclose that this is a sponsorship so that everyone that’s coming to the site knows that you’re being paid to talk about their product company brand. All links must be nofollow, so we talked about that any affiliate link.
Any sponsorship link need to be nofollow links you if they are. If they’re kept, do follow, links it’s, basically getting paid. They’re, basically paying you to get link juice in a backlink from your site and that’s.
A big no-no in Google’s eyes. So what I like to do is always save the e-mails back and forth, as our paper trail in our agreement, but it’s, probably best to always get a contract. If you have one, when you’re working with bigger companies, you’re, going to find that they do have contracts so definitely read through those and make sure that you agree with everything.
And then that’s. Your contract. But most of the time, a lot of times it’s, just emails back and forth in an agreement through an email so make sure that you save those. So hopefully that was really good training and you kind of got your mind working on how to land sponsored posts.
I’m gonna have some more stuff in the in the description with links to more resources. On an article, I wrote on fincon about everything sponsored post and how to land them, and then we ‘ Ll also have a sponsored post checklist to kind of get you in the right mindset of the things you need to check off in order to land.
Your first sponsored post, but in summary here sponsored posts are completely different than guest posts. So guest posts are an agreement between two bloggers to kind of get in front of each other’s. Audiences get a backlink to each other, which is perfectly fine, because there’s, no money being trans Tran.
There’s. No transaction of money through guest posts, it’s, basically like helping out another blogger and letting them get in front of your audience for a little bit, so sponsored post guest posts completely different.
So if someone’s reaching out and asking how much it costs to guest post on your site, it’s, probably spam, and they’re. Just looking for that paid backlink, which is you can’t, do so make a quarter list of companies.
So we like to I like, I said I have a Google Doc that has over a hundred companies that we’d, like to work with that, we know, will provide value for audience and help them out so just make that chord list of companies.
You can do that by just thinking about the companies that your audience might like doing: competitor research going on those influenced their networks and seeing which companies are there quite often, and just have that list to always refer back to make your blog brand business.
Look as professional as possible, so you want your blog to be professional when a company lands on it. You want a nice media kit, you want an advertising page, so they can quickly and easily find a way to reach out to you and work with.
You always ask companies what their needs are and their marketing budget so, like I said this is a negotiation when you’re working with a company on a sponsorship, so treat it like such figure out what their needs are.
That’s. Number one and selling anything is you don’t want to sell the company, you want to figure what their needs are meet their needs, and then you can get paid so figure out what their needs are. What are they looking for in working with you and what’s, their marketing budget? So how much money do they have to pay for a sponsored post for social media marketing, all that type of stuff? And then you can put together a nice proposal that fits within their budget for what you’re willing to offer, create a value proposition bundle package, so that’s.
The proposal that I like to put together it’s. Basically, just has a nice letterhead at the top, a description of what we’re willing to work on and then at the bottom. It has our fees. So I’ll, say sponsored post fee thousand dollars social media marketing thousand dollars and, like I said, you have to fit within their budget or try to and figure out what you’re worth as far as your marketing skills and outreach With your blog always always always trying to over-deliver, so when I first started, I treated these as like one-off holy crap.
I just made $ 2,000, and I really didn’t, put all that much effort into it, which is a huge mistake, because these companies have big pockets. They have marketing budgets. If you do a good job, they’re gonna, come back and repeat bee repeat customers.
So once you get to the level where you’re, making thousands of dollars on these sponsorships, that can be something that you do every single year so and a good rule of thumb. With businesses it’s, always easier to keep a customer than get a new one.
So make sure you never burn bridges, always try to over perform and get those repeat. Businesses coming back to work with you remember, you must disclose every time you work in the company at the top on social media.
You need to put ad and make sure people know that you’re being paid to talk about the company, so just make sure you’re up to date on all that legal stuff and one of the most important things that I Can tell you from this is never work with a company.
You don’t believe in your audience, is gonna be able to tell if you’re just in it for the money, and you work your butt off to build that trust. With your with your audience, through your blog and through your business, so don’t jeopardize that by working with companies that are absolutely crap and you’re just in it for the money and have a clear, clear, clear mind when you’re working with them.
You know don’t work with companies. Don’t blame them. Basically, so hopefully that was helpful. Guys again, my name is Kellan. I am from the savvy couple calm. We do have a blogging Facebook group that is absolutely incredible blogging with purpose the link will be below, and hopefully we see you in there and have a wonderful day if you have any questions on sponsored blog post sponsor, shows marketing campaigns.