Advertisers Using Fashion Blogs to Promote Products

Many of the popular Fashion blogs that I read (vipxo, llymlrs, milkteef), all have something in common: Promotion. A lot of popular blogs have advertisements on them, either on the top or the sides.

Companies have an opportunity to advertise their brand/product on numerous blogs, allowing the bloggers readers to be exposed to the advertisements. Many bloggers endorse products that are given to them by the brand/company, another advertising technique to attract consumers.

By sending products to Bloggers to feature on their blogs, Bloggers can give the product a lot of exposure depending on how many views and followers that they have. For example, Vipxo receives over 2500 views on her blog a day, 72,000+ views a month, and a total of 400,000 views since the start of her blog. She also has over 2800 followers on blogger, and over 2500 followers on Twitter, another social networking site that can be used to promote products.  She sells advertising space monthly and for two different sizes right here. For five pounds (approx. ten canadian dollars), an advertiser can place a 350 x 70 advertisement, giving the brand so much exposure.

Another way of promotion by bloggers is by giveaways. Giveaways is when a company sends a product to a Blogger and they post a blog with that product, promoting the giveaway. For example, the brand Dixi can send a request to a blogger to post a promotion about their current giveaway of an article of clothing, such as this cardigan. Some of the rules can be, "In the comment field, write your two favourite products on the Dixi website" and "Follow the Dixi blogspot", so its not only promoting the giveaway, but its promoting Dixi's various sites also.

Just by what the Fashion Bloggers wear is an advertisement. Many readers request that links are posted along with what the Bloggers wear, in order for the readers to buy the fashion too.  By posting outfit posts featuring the different brands, the Bloggers are being an advertisement for that company, they are just not being paid to feature the fashion.

I think that using blogs to promote products is a mix of good and bad. Sometimes, as a reader, it feels like the Blogger is 'selling out' for money, if the product does not relate well to the blog, thus changing the view that the reader had on that Blog/Blogger.