Sometimes I wonder what my life would look like if I didn’t blog. I’ve literally never experienced going home after work and not having to write blog posts or answer emails. I started Louboutins & Love while I was in my last semester of college. I was interning at the time for a lingerie design company and I remember going to work the day after creating my blog and proudly scribbling the domain name on a scrap of paper for my boss. My boss tacked it up in her cubicle and I sat at my desk watching the view counter on my homepage go up. I was a very happy person when my views hit 100. My goals are a lot bigger now lol. I’ve held many jobs since then and I’ve only gotten busier with L&L, so I really do wonder what normal people do after their day jobs. What’s it like to just go home and relax without worrying about running a business?

I didn’t start calling Louboutins & Love a business until a couple years in. I was already working with brands, but I wasn’t getting paid, so I didn’t feel that I could label myself a business owner. Even after building a substantial social following, I still didn’t feel comfortable charging brands. It wasn’t until I was speaking with my friend who had way fewer followers than I had, but charged $70 per post, that I realized I was seriously undermining my value. There’s always a fear that if you send a brand your rate card, they’ll just stop responding to your emails. This happens a lot with bigger companies who don’t need to pay bloggers. Their brand name is reputable enough that even more established bloggers will work in exchange for product. There’s also a fear of asking for too much or too little since there really are no standard blogger rates.

While I was doing blogger outreach for Elizabeth and James, at least 25-30 influencers responded with their collab rates. The numbers they sent honestly made no sense. Some bloggers who had 5k followers asked for the same amount as bloggers with 40k followers. One blogger with 100k followers asked for $500, another with 20k asked for $1000, and another with 50k asked for $99. Many bloggers who had over 60k with strong engagement didn’t even ask for money. It was really ridiculous. The requests started to mean nothing to me because clearly no one knows the actual value of a blog post. Everyone seems to have her own idea based on very different standards.

I was talking about this disconnect between blogger followings and rates with my fav girls from the NYC Style Collective when they told me about their Sponsored Post Calculator. I believe you have to be part of the Collective to access the calculator, but it basically just has you break down the hours it takes you to create a blog post from start to finish and multiply that number by your hourly rate, taking into account how many followers you have. Hourly rates will obviously be different for everyone, but I loved how calculating rates became a simple math equation. You should be charging brands for your work, but you need to understand where the amount comes from. That way bloggers can start getting on the same page and brands can start taking us all a little more seriously.

OUTFIT BREAKDOWN:
Long Grey Sweater: H&M
Jeans: Parker Smith Jeans (c/o)
Leather Buckle Tote: Pennyroyal (c/o)
Leopard Booties: Coach

Makeup Credit: Deena Goldberg
Photo Credit: Sophie Sahara

xx Esther