One of the most fun parts of being a blogger or influencer is working with brands you love. It’s a great way to earn income, and fun way to establish relationships, grow your audience and share what you think is useful content to your fans.

It’s really not that difficult, but it does take time.

So how do you do it?

I’ve broken it down to 4 simple steps you can follow:

1. You need to grow your platform

Before any type of collaboration, you will need to provide an incentive to brands to work with you. That means good content on your blog, Instagram page, Youtube, Facebook, whatever it is you use. And of course, a decent following so brands will find it worth their time, effort and money to work with you. And make sure you are engaged with your audience as well! So many people buy followers and likes, or use bots that automate messages. Brands are much smarter now and will screen through that.

And make sure your content, style and presentation fits the type of brands you want to work with. Brands care a lot about aligning their brand strategy and your style needs to come close to these brands you want to work with.

2. Create a list and research the companies you want to work with that fits your style

You will need to make a list of these companies, understand what they want, have their email and social media tags ready.

As mentioned above already, brands care a lot about aligning their brand strategy with yours, so you need to be able to seamlessly fit them into your content, your blog or social media page.

You may have a lot of large brands in your mind already that you’d like to work with. But if you’re starting off, it’s better to reach out to the smaller brands and work with them first. Get your feet wet and also build up your portfolio.

3. Contact the brands

Once you are ready, start reaching out and seeing if brands would like to collaborate with you. In step two, you should have an email list ready to email the brands you’d like to work with.

Here’s the email pitch I use:
Hi (Name),

I’ve been following your brand’s products for quite awhile now and love what you’re doing. Especially the (so and so) item.

My readers love hearing about new brand products that are special and unique. I know many of them will love your products too!

My blog www.wuwulife.com gets 5,000 views/month and very high engagement on my Instagram page which you can see at www.instagram.com/wuwulife

I’d love to share some your products with my readers about (whatever the item’s benefit you are pitching).

Love to partner with you guys in some way.

Would this be something you guys are considering?

Thanks!

And when you post on social media, tag them so they know to checkout your content.

  • Work with PR companies that are looking for bloggers.
  • There are many Apps like TRIBE that brands post jobs on you can reach out to.
  • Websites such as Influence.co or ambassadher.com that brands also submit jobs you can apply to.

I made it up! How's my serious game face?

Una publicación compartida de Mikey Wu (@wuwulife) el

For me, even though my page is not as large as some of the bigger ones, brands just communicate with me directly on instagram DM.
In my opinion, the best is to get free products in exchange for a shoutout or blog post to build up your resume. This way bigger brands can see your work and style.
Rates are really hard to say as it varies within category, country, and how much effort put in. And most importantly, how big your fan base is. There are bloggers that will mention rule of thumb rates, but in my experience it really depends on the brand.
I usually get a feel of the brand first and see what their budget is. And because I’ve worked with brands before, know I won’t charge below a certain minimum for the work involved.

4. Have fun!

Enjoy your time doing this. It shouldn’t feel like a chore, it should be fun! And focus on building good content, because you can reach out all you want, but if your content is poor, you’ll never gain traction. Brands will notice you automatically if you have amazing content! They will come reaching out to you instead! It’s a lot easier that way.

Try not to be discouraged as it will take some time before you can find a brand who is interested to work with you. Every company has different goals, budgets and opinions on how they work.  Don’t give up! It’s a turtle race! It only gets better!