Mommy Market Saturated?

I usually don’t publish my comments to other blog posts here, but this one was long enough that I thought it deserved space here as well. As you know, I’ve entered the world of mommy blogging and I’m a freelance writer (check my last post on a comprehensive guide to stethoscopes), so have quite a few thoughts on the below issue.

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester wrote an interesting post after attending a BlogHer party – he poses the following questions after commenting about the swag that the BlogHer party attendees received:

When this organic and natural market gets saturated from the many vendors pitching at them (would make Scoble blush) what impacts does this have to: 1) credibility of the women bloggers, 2) Effectiveness of brands trying to reach this inundated market? 3) If credibility and demand is reduced to this market, will it decrease their influence? How will they be able to maintain these levels? I think something has to give.

Of course, me being me, I responded. The comment I left was this:

Very interesting post. I’m a mom, and I blog – making me a mommy blogger, I suppose. I run a group parenting and sleep blog at https://www.sleepdeeper.net and we are often approached by companies about reviewing their products.

You address the issue of swag and tons of free product, but how is this really any different than what has been happening with magazines for years? We all know that magazine beauty editors don’t go out and purchase all of the items they review in their magazines, but it isn’t specifically spelled out – why are mom bloggers different?

When we do reviews on our site, it’s with the understanding that the company has sent us something to review. We don’t get paid to write our reviews, but for a brand to approach US and request essentially free advertising, a sample of the product is mandatory, otherwise we’d simply be an ad blog. We only do reviews once per week as to not dilute our main content, but I think these posts are really beneficial to our readers as we a) don’t publish negative reviews – if we don’t like a product, we don’t write a review – so the moms are getting great tips on good products and b) we almost always do a giveaway with the review. This brings in more readers to our site benefiting us AND the company. Again, this is much the same as magazines do.

What’s the cost to the company? The cost of the product. What’s the benefit to the company? Well, that’s all determined by the traffic to the site and the perceived credibility of the writers.

Lots to think about with this, but I don’t think the market is inundated or saturated – there are many women bloggers who have NEVER been approached. Perhaps you were swayed by the “A” list at BlogHer because they ALL received swag there, but this is only a portion of the female blogging population.

Thanks again for writing about this!

Are you screaming sell out as you read this? Convince me Im wrong, cmon!

The conversation is actually continuing over on Jeremiahs post right now – head on over and keep reading or weigh in!

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