Here are my lessons learned so far in this area that partly zooms in when I start declining blog post assignments:
- Choose the right blog
When joining blog advertising and marketing networks, one of the requirements is for your blog to be submitted, reviewed, and a rate is assigned. If my blog has traditional Google AdSense type of ads, I submit blogs that have low ad clicks revenue despite high reasonable ranking.
Although it would be great to enjoy the best of both worlds. I have come to accept at the moment that you can't really have both without getting at least one compromised. - Set a reasonable rate range
Advertisers pay differently but I find that one should set a rate and not accept assignments below it. At least you have to make it worth your while. - No to excessive links
The last ad I declined lately request for 7 keywords to be linked. However, the advertiser stated linking to both its singular and plural form. Then that would meant 14 links in total. That is too much for me and therefore declined. - Advertiser representation
There's one blog network I joined and encountered an advertiser whose ad instruction were poorly written and refers to a site that is hosted in a free blogging service platform. I partly got worried on the advertiser's authenticity.
There are also advertisers who tends to use keywords that may put your blog in a totally different rating or insinuating adult content. So choose your advertisers well. - No to confusing linking instructions
There was an ad I did before where the client requested for two pages to be linked. I mentioned the site name, without linking to it, and got declined. After 2 revisions, it still got declined and so I decided to cancel it.
Earlier, I also declined another ad. The client mentioned two key phrases that has a brand name as first word. Then next sentence said that it is not necessary to mention the brand. It gave two more key phrases similar to the first two without the brand this time. Then next sentence again said that the adjective need not be used. For me, I felt that this is the kind of client who will take advantage of bloggers and may end up rejecting the ad made for supposedly not following instructions. By the time the blogger decides to cancel the task, the blog juice has already been generated.
