Mad Men – Advertising Agencies (Photo credit: DavidErickson)

Interior Designers can be lucky enough to be paid to publish articles by other companies on their own site. You could get several hundred dollars/pounds a year by doing this without being too detrimental to your readership. If you are good you could then even get asked to paid to write on other blogs…but let’s not get ahead of ourselves!

You may well already have been approached several times by annoying emails asking you to host a guest blog post from another company. Most of these you probably ignored. Fair enough, we all do that. However from my experience they are NEARLY ALL genuine. Now, I’m not saying they are genuine MONEY-MAKING opportunities for you! BUT they are at least genuine enquiries.

The problem, which if you have responded to any of these emails, is that most essentially want you to host a free advertising-like article for another company. They pretend to be offering you ‘free’ content. Usually such an article is written by an independent blogger or ad agency who is being paid to get content on other websites/blogs. Ones like yours and mine!

Yet they want this for free [Big unhappy face for that one!] I don’t like using emoticons but :-( is DEFINATELY appropriate here. I mean, what a cheek! You may well have spent years building up your blog and readership and now somebody wants to piggy-back on your success FOR FREE. I don’t think so! That’s really very, very (and I’ll say it again VERY) cheeky.

Click To Read More Interior Design Articles

So what I do first of all is to try to sort the wheat from the chaff. I reply and send a very short email with MY advertising rate card attached (click on the link to my advertising rate card and you can copy, change and use it yourself). This then gets rid of 80% of the original respondents who really were just looking for a freebie. Maybe there are lots of suckers out there?

But what about the remaining 20%? Well they are real, genuine enquiries who WILL pay you some money in return for a post and an image and a back-link. Easy money for you. BUT how much should you charge? And how easy will it really be in terms of the time required by you to either write, edit or publish it?

What is a Sponsored Blog Post?

A sponsored blog post is a blog post which you are paid publish on your blog. It may be written by you, an agency or another blogger. Effectively it is an advert pretending to be an article and it will usually contain at least one backlink and one image.

To be honest with your readership and to comply with laws in some countries you should include a footer line clearly stating that Company X has sponsored this post.

Sponsored Blog Post Rate Recommendations

There are many rate cards or charts out there. Most try to come up with a figure of what you should be paid based on some complicated technical algorithm. In the end it will come down to what the buyer/advertiser is willing to pay AND the number of people in the chain of command taking a cut on this ie AT LEAST an agency and a writer and you need to get paid for this.

The amount will depend very much on the industry you are in.

Let’s look at the interior design industry. Over the years manufacturers (like us, KOTHEA) have paid THOUSANDS of pounds for full page colour ads in House & Gardens, World of Interiors and the like. If you also add in the cost of photographing and producing the image and managing the advertising process then you are talking about a very significant amount of additional cost ie MANY thousands of pounds. In the case of a fabric company, you have to sell a LOT of fabric to break-even on that – probably an amount equivalent to the profit from one of your BEST customers over a whole year.

Niche interior design industry manufacturers can’t afford that kind of cost. So they have historically, typically paid for small, ineffective ads on the back pages of the abovementioned publications. Still, these small ads cost hundreds of pounds.

So most manufacturers/sellers DO HAVE an advertising budget. That’s the point.

The issue with advertising on blogs is that the readership is often MUCH smaller than a renowned international magazine. The readership is potentially no more or less relevant than your readership just that there is more of it. Your blog is potentially attractive, however, because it is impossible to produce true statistics to see who actually saw and remembered those expensive colour ads in the press – whereas you DO have the stats for your followers, subscribers and visitors. KOTHEA’s blog has many hundreds of followers, a blog like DesignMilk has probably got many thousands. Yours might have NO followers.

So if that were the only way of valuing a paid-for blog post on your site you would get paid nothing. And I wouldn’t get paid that much!

But that clearly is NOT the full story. Your wider readership is MUCH wider than your followers of your blog. It includes the followers on your FB page, your Twitter feed and of course many people will ‘just’ arrive at your blog after a generic internet search. So the overall traffic you receive is also important as is the amount of time and number of pages the average visitor spends on your site as is technical considerations like PAGERANK. The latter of which plays a role in determining the likelihood of someone arriving on  your page after a generic Google search.

So manufacturers DO HAVE a budget. But it will be spread over many media types and the amount allocated to blogs will also be spread according to the perceived effectiveness of that blog in reaching the manufacturers target audience. And it will be spread over LOTS of blogs.

Who is your target audience? Is it other designers or is it potential customers for you or is it people who want to learn about interior design or someone else? None of those are essentially ‘good’ or ‘bad’, just different. Different manufacturers will want to target different kinds of customers.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say in this section is that the Interior Design industry does have money to spend on paid for blog adverts BUT that it is at lower levels to that found in other industries (from my experience). So some of the rate cards you see elsewhere are too high for you to achieve…unless you run DesignMilk or one of the blogs with LITERALLY millions (plural) of unique hits a year.

What Blog Advertising Agencies Charge for Sponsored Blog Posts

I have limited contacts in ad agencies. But I do have some.

From what I can gather the ‘top dollar’ rate paid by a advertiser will be US$/GBP1,600. The agency will get broadly half that and you or I would, again, get half of that half. (A quarter for all you maths genius types out there). So you might get US$/GBP400 if you are lucky. I’ve managed GBP200 from M&S on KOTHEA’s site, and larger amounts outside the Interior Design industry.

You might be able to get 4 ads a month at GBP/US$50. But then do you want Jo’s Roman Blinds and Petra’s Porcelain Cornicing advertising on your site? They were totally fictitious companies but you get my drift that the companies that pay top-dollar are more likely to be top brands that you want on your site rather than local unknowns.

Here are my suggestions on what bloggers should charge for sponsored blog posts.

I’m using two metrics here, unique visitors per month and Google PageRank as a measure of authority.

How to Decide What to Charge for Sponsored Blog Posts

So you’ve seen a generic guideline as low as US$50. That might put you off. Then again you might think that you offer more value to a potential advertiser and that may well be true. If it is true then the rates are more flexible so consider:

• You could offer exclusivity to your advertiser for monthly, repeat business.
• Do you want a low volume, high value approach or a high volume, low value approach? The latter is probably more realistic but probably more detrimental to your image.
• Do you also post to pinterest? tumblr? Google+? twitter? Facebook? If you have a wider social reach then that will justify a premium.
• Is the company actually one that might be of interest to who your know your readership to be? Be sure the advertiser will check the effectiveness of their ad. If it was successful they will come back for more. It will only be successful if the message and the audience match.
• Will you write the post? That is one option where you save the agency some money on copyrighting and so you can charge more.  But will the agency trust your writing skills?
•  Will you write/host an ad? Or can it be genuinely meshed in with what you normally write? Again, the latter has more value but the agency might prefer the control they have of the former.

Best Practice Tips for Sponsored Blog Posts

1. Develop your portfolio

Just get started at lower rates and build up a portfolio of ads. You can then use that track record to raise your rates later.

2. Understand your true value

Read this article closely and develop a charging structure that genuinely reflects your influence and writing skills. You’ll get found out, or exploited, soon enough.

3. Get payment

Get paid, then write. In that order. Or ‘take down’ the ad/post if payment is not made within 24 hours (eg to you by paypal). Agencies WILL pay that quickly.

4. Be professional

Start with my rate card and some of the points on that. Expand it to include the following points stating the process you will follow:

• take payment;
• write the headline;
• write the blog post;
• make client’s changes;
• approve final copy;
• schedule the blog post;
• publish the post.

Insist that you have final say of the copy of the advertiser writes the copy.

5. Quality not price

I am pushed for time and generally I only accept a sponsored post written by someone else and approved by me. If you have more time then on some occasions you can get paid MORE for writing the copy.

Many companies don’t really mind either way as long as what you say is positive AND that you link back to their site. Many of these companies are just paying for glorified back-links to improve their position in Google ranking.

More enlightened companies will be looking at building the buzz or conversation around their brand. They will be looking for someone to push their brand to your engaged readership. These enlightened companies are the ones that will pay more but then you might need to deliver more than just an article. So you might additionally agree to post a few links back to your article on forums or on twitter or other sources.

6. Be honest with your readership

When you start writing sponsored blog posts let your readers know what you are doing and why. Be honest.

7. Ask for more

Some advertising agencies will be able to offer you multiple payments for multiple posts. You  might want to give a discount for this.

Let  your client know when the article is published and tell them any extra things you have done such as automatically posting it to Twitter.

8. Follow the Google guidelines

Google frowns on sites that sell text links too frequently. 4 times a month isn’t going to cause any problems. If you plan to do it more than that then make sure you do some more research. (look on google for rel=nofollow)

9. Blog advertising agencies

There are apparently agencies that can direct opportunities towards your site. I only found one (can’t remember it’s name) but I never had any joy with it.

10. Build your brand

It’s fine to use all of this as a side line. Don’t get too carried away as you will end up wasting too much time and diluting your brand.

The Final Word on Sponsored Blog Posts

Don’t sell yourself short. Don’t give away things that have a value for nothing.

Related articles

• Great blog (thingsforinteriors.wordpress.com)
• Top CAD programs for Interior Designers: review (insidespacedesign.wordpress.com)

New black curtains shading for the sun. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the specifications for the flame retardancy for contract curtains in the UK is Contract Curtains – BS 5867: part2: 1980: Type B.

Q: Is this the right one for you to use?
A: Maybe.

It is normally the responsibility of the interior desinger to determine what specification is required and to agree that with the local fire officer. Sometimes there might not be an interior designer. In that situation it is the responsibility of someone like, for example, the hotel owner. It is NOT THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE FABRIC COMPANY nor is it the responsibility of the CURTAIN MAKER.

You should also tread carefully. If from your research you decide that the correct specification is BS 5867: part2: 1980: Type B then you are still not all the way there. If you plan to use other materials with your curtain or hang them in a novel way or with some sort of coating then all those ‘extra bits’ are relevant. The fire officer needs to be consulted to see if your method of making and hanging the curtains is OK.

Also note that if you are having your fabric treated by someone like Essex Flameproofing or TEK or Textiles FR then once they have treated the fabric they may well perform an indicative test. However if you are then going on to do unusual things to the fabric whilst making and hanging the curtains then you may have to have the curtain material tested by a testing house – such as TFT Ilkley. IE they test the retardancy and compliance of the made up curtain and not just the raw fabric in laboratory conditions.

If you are unsure of these opinions then please consult your local fire officer for correct guidance.

Interior Design 2013

A big thank you to Kiki for our nomination for the Inspiring Blog Award. It’s always great to know that we are reaching out to new generations of Interior Designers.

Following the rules of this award I have to tell you a little bit about myself.

1. Many years ago I danced with Brad Pitt. Well; I was in the same nightclub and I sort of manoeuvred myself into his general vicinity. That counts right?

2. One of my scariest moments is travelling at over 230kmh in a sports car. I wasn’t driving (luckily someone else was) and you will be relieved to know that we were on a race track.

3. I inadvertently inherited a collection of 1980s vinyl ‘LP’ covers. After years of sitting in a box I discovered that when framed then made a great art installation next to my work area at home.

4. The first paint I chose was for my own bedroom .Dark green. Hmmm.

5. I like people, dogs and cats. In that order.

6. Most interesting party venues: On a roof top in Manhattan and some bizarre, mostly uninhabited, island somewhere near Comodo that even now I can’t quite remember the name of.

7. Most stupid question, “Do you like chocolate?”

Inspirational Blogs (I’d like to nominate!): Here are some that I enjoy:

Pippa Jameson

Kelly Hoppen

The Style Files

Anne Sage

Design Geek

Apartment Therapy

Tevami

There are a few rules to accepting this blog award…

1. Display the award image on your blog page.

2. Link back to the person who nominated you and ‘like’ the post

3. State seven facts about yourself.

4. Nominate 15 other bloggers for the award.

5. Notify your bloggers of their nomination and link to their posts.

Related articles

• Interior Design Trends for 2013 That’ll Inspire Creative Minds (epicahome.com)

Reblogged from Showcase Designs:

Adding color to a room can be tricky business. A couple years ago, a friend of mine came to visit my new home. I  had picked out a lovely robin's egg bedspread and while she was in town, we went shopping for some linens.

Truth is, she has great taste, and that is the reason I brought her along on this trip, but when we got to the home store, I went right to the whites and ivories.

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Reblogged from The Tidy Abode:

Breaking into the Interior Design world is a life-long dream.  I am so pleased to announce the creation of The Tidy Abode, Interior Design and Home Organizing.  If you could make your home feel and function in a way that reflects you and your lifestyle, would you?  Interior Design can be as simple as redecorating, decluttering, or reorganizing.  It can be as complicated as demolition, remodeling or renovating. 

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Reblogged from AchillesPortfolio:

Illustration for a blog of an interior designer client, who wanted a humorous representation of what people think interior designers do all day:

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Reblogged from Anita Brown [Design Studio]:

I'm not a fan of Sundays because I have a loathing of what's to follow: Monday.  However, one of my budding bloggers, Rachael the esteemed owner of Interior Thinking very kindly nominated my little blog for the Inspiring Blog Award.  How nice!  So now my Sunday is much less unpleasant.  It's great to know that there are actual people out there reading and enjoying my mutterings on interior design.  

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Anyway, I just thought the pink linen image looked nice and I wanted to share it with you!

Related articles

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• Fine Faux Leather Upholstery – New Contract Fabrics With High Abrasion Martindale (kothea.com)
• Linen Grocery Tote – the purl bee (gmaellenscraftycorner.wordpress.com)

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Lifestyle interiors are a building company offering a comprehensive design & build service spanning from concept to completion. This locally based company’s services come highly recommended by James Pendleton’s Angel department with whom they work in conjunction.  The multi skilled team are able to deal with property issues large and small and are pleasant and thorough to work with.  Contact James Pendleton’s…

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Reblogged from LOVE LETTERS TO HOME.:

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So as a woman, lover of all things beautiful, and fashion major, I have collected white a few pieces of jewelry for being so young. Every girl loves a little something that sparkles. I, however, and one of those people that unless all my options are out in front of me I tend to forget all the wonderful pieces I have.

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Reblogged from justinlovewithberni:

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I wish you a lovely day!!!

Love, xoxo, Berni

Picture from Pinterest

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what to do with all those pictures...

[ via ]

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What a outstanding new landmark for Amsterdam, architects Benthem Crouwel have designed this astounding 60 meter hotel, The Fletcher Hotel that is. As the slim silhouette and the blue light illuminate the Amsterdam skyline, this is one sight that will still be around even after sunset. Even though the space of the hotel overall is somewhat limited, Bethem Crouwel was successful in using the space efficiently. 

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Reblogged from WW Builders:

Celebrating all things inspiring in design, we wanted to share this beautiful kitchen design!

We ask the question ... "if you could do this ... would you" because this is a very dramatic statement and not for the faint of  heart.

Plus you'll have to have strong neck muscles ... you'll be looking up a lot!

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Reblogged from JAESONKO:

Marker and Collage on Sketchbook.
Inspired by the Dante's 14th-century epic poem called Inferno.

“The path to paradise begins in hell.”
― Dante Alighieri.

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Reblogged from CertaPro Painters of Northern Arizona:

via Freshome.com - Interior Design & Architecture Magazine http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreshInspirationForYourHome/~3/sP12-9jVm7o/

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Reblogged from LittlePinkIdeas:

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I always hated chandeliers when I was younger. I found them tacky, ugly and thought anyone who had one must be completely mad. A little older now and I think chandeliers are the best things in the world!

The most dazzling statement of elegance in a home, the chandelier signifies luxury, class and beauty. They can transform a room with their elegant, illuminating presence and are a huge talking point for jealous visitors!

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Reblogged from moxiebabyboutique:

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There's always a battle between making something kid friendly while at the same time adhering to the style of your home. Here are some fun ways that make both mom and the little one happy!

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Reblogged from Brits and Grits:

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I have a funny feeling that I might be growing up.

I'm actually considering buying a house.

While the prospect of taking on this level of responsibility is somewhat daunting, I am distracting myself with the thought that for the first time in my life, I can make the place I live exactly how I want it.

I'm sure that, given the modest budget I'll be working with, my interior design skills will only be stretched to painting a few walls and hanging some pictures.

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Reblogged from Diary of an Interior Novice:

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Good morning, I hope you are well. Over the weekend I went to Stockholm to attend the Meet the Bloggers convention. As I mentioned in my last post, I was a little nervous about the whole thing as it was a new experience and I'd never been to anything like it before. So now I have to report back that I shouldn't have worried.

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Reblogged from Diary of an Interior Novice:

Happy Inspiration Day. I must admit that every week I look forward to posting this column. I get so inspired when I research the beautiful views from around the world that I almost get lost in it all.

Today, I'm keeping with the Swedish theme where I found a most inspiring architecture firm called Sommar Nojen or in english Summer Pleasures (I even love the name) based in Stockholm who specialise in creating and building summer houses.

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Reblogged from Diary of an Interior Novice:

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So the other day I came across a picture that had the most amazing pendant light. It's a light made entirely out of Ostrich Feathers by Haldane Martin. I found myself looking at the picture for a long time, not just because of the pendant light which I now need to find a place in my home for, somewhere, anywhere!

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Reblogged from The Anecdotal Goat:

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This weekend I was on a hunt for curtains for our living room. We have a double rod in the living room, so I wound up with cotton/linen opaque curtains in a steel gray color on the outer rod, and on the inner rod I’m using white sheer linen curtains. I got to thinking, what is linen exactly? It’s a material I hear of all the time.

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How is it like working through the renovation with an interior designer? Joey Khu from interior design firm Project File provides some insight

By Jasmine Goh 

SR: From a designer’s point of view, how can homeowners prepare themselves when engaging an interior designer?
Joey K: Everyone is different and depending on their lifestyles, finances and housing types, each homeowner has different needs.

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Reblogged from {.k.}:

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oliofriends:

Charisse lives in Arizona with her husband of twenty years and her dog Romeo. She is an interior designer and frequent blogger.

She discovered Olioboard from an interior designer friend on LinkedIn a couple of years ago and has been hooked ever since.

Last year she won an award in the Zinc Door vibrant spring contest for her design Capricious which included a photograph she took while visiting Capri, Italy.

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Reblogged from Market Measures Australia:

Yes, that's how Site Interior Design must have felt when they created this bedroom design. And you know what...i quite like it!

I wonder what the rest of the house looks like.

MMA

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Reblogged from The Zoë Pages:

Wall mounted, these chunky, stacked chopping boards are both practical and beautiful.

Chopping board stack, £75, Sparrow & Finch.

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Reblogged from Stories by Stella:

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Amanda Carol is an Interior Designer from Texas. Amanda originally took Art and Design in Collage several years ago, however it wasnt until she started blogging her design ideas in 2008 that her passion took a turn and in 2010 Amanda started her own interior design business.

Check out her blog/website www.amandacarolathome.com

images via amandacarolathome.com

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Reblogged from {.k.}:

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oliofriends:

Heather began designing when she was 15 while she was working for a floral design company, continued her design career by doing window displays for a local department store.
Later she decided to go to design school and get my degree in interior design and began working for an interior design and architecture firm.
Heather have been doing design work for over 20 years and she loved every minute.!

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