My First Collaborating Experience..

Hi guys!

As you may recall, I created a post before Valentine’s Day to show you some bridal makeup inspired by certain wedding gowns. That post was in collaboration with the company Loverly. After many offers, this was my first time agreeing to a collab with anyone on my blog. That being said, I was so excited to work with a company to provide my readers with relevant content that they could enjoy and hopefully benefit from. It didn’t however, turn out to be the best decision for me. I wanted to share my story with you guys. Hopefully this will help you all if and when you are approached by companies.

I was approached by Loverly at the beginning of February asking to collaborate on a bridal beauty post for you all. They asked me to feature a few of their wedding dresses and create makeup looks inspired by them. I was so excited with Valentine’s Day coming up, I thought the content would be fabulous for this blog. In return, Loverly agreed to feature my post and blog on their social media platforms. I was grateful for this agreement because it would allow my blog to reach a larger audience. I was asked to make my post live within a certain time frame, include specific links, and feature dresses from a certain page on their site. I complied with every request and had the post up for you guys before Valentine’s Day! Many of you enjoyed and I had great feedback! However, after sharing the post with Loverly, I didn’t receive the benefits I was promised. I was in communication with a woman “not in the social media department”, that could only apologize and promise to get my information to “the correct department”.

As you can tell, I was given the run around for weeks. After a few more emails expressing my concern and confusion, I am still in the same position, with no more answers. All in all, this company has gotten what they wanted, a complete feature on my blog for my audience. They have not given anything in return, not even the one promised feature. Imagine my frustration with this company being my first collaboration with my beloved readers and them not holding up their end of the bargain. So here we are, almost a month after the fact, and I am telling my story. I’m very certain I am not alone in this, so I wanted to share so you all could be aware as I was not at the time. It’s very easy for companies to approach certain blogs to get free advertisement and publicity and get everything they ask. However, sometimes it ends with the blogger getting the wrong end of the deal.

I am not speaking ill of the company as a whole, but I want every smaller blogger to be aware and not be used by companies who don’t care about you or your readers. It’s all about the sales and publicity with some of these businesses and you have to always look out for your and your blog’s best interest.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story. I will update you all with any changes but I honestly don’t expect any. I hope this was helpful to you all! I’d love to hear your story if you had something similar happen to you, please share!

XX, Amy

P.S. My boyfriend has started a Kickstarter campaign to help get his handmade business off the ground, I’d LOVE if you all could take a second to check it out and even share! He’s sending out rewards for every donation! Here’s the link: http://goo.gl/daQS0u

---

Email: polishedbyamyy@gmail.com

Youtube Channel : Polished by Amy

Instagram: @polishedbyamy