PRs and advertisers – please read this first before contacting me about potential opportunities.
FACTS AND FIGURES
I have been blogging at CookSister since May 2004 and the blog has built up a solid following. My traffic stats (available upon request) are healthy and consistent – here are some general facts and figures:
- CookSister’s readers are overwhelmingly located in the UK, USA and South Africa.
- 2,700+ Facebook followers.
- 10,500+ Twitter followers.
- 4,700+ Instagram followers.
- 3,500+ Pinterest followers.
- Google Pagerank of 5.
- Domain Authority of 50.
- CookSister has been ranked no. 1 fourteen times since December 2013 on the Foodies 100 UK food blog influence rankings and ranked at no. 1 on the 2014 annual Foodies 100 chart. CookSister features consistently in the monthly and annual Top 20 rankings.
- CookSister has also ranked in the top 10 in the Trips 100 index of UK travel blogs.
I HAVE A FULL-TIME DAY JOB
This means I am not usually able to attend midweek daytime events. However, should the event be particularly interesting to me, I can arrange time off to attend, provided that I am given enough advance notice. Although I do not support myself financially from this blog, I value my leisure time and I reserve the right not work for free, whether this is in the form of providing content/coverage; developing recipes; hosting a giveaway; social media promotion or any other time-intensive activity.
HERE’S WHAT I CAN DO FOR YOU FOR FREE:
- Feature your restaurant, hotel, airline or destination after a review visit has been arranged. Posts will be detailed and photo-heavy, but please note that I reserve full editorial control at all times and publishing posts by a particular deadline will incur a fee.
- Review your food, drink or tech-related product after samples have been received. If you send me a sample, I will write or not write about it at my sole discretion and I will retain full editorial control of every post. I will only include a link where I think it is appropriate, not because I have been told to. If you would like your product, logo or link to appear on my website, the only way of ensuring that this happens is to buy advertising space. All links, where included at the request of a PR or brand will be nofollow links. This means that the link will still click through to your site, but the fact that I am linking to you will not be taken into account in determining your Google PageRank. The reason why I do this is because of this rule made by Google and this is not negotiable.
WHAT I CAN DO FOR YOU FOR A FEE:
- Write commissioned articles of any length for your website or print/online publication. Click here for my print and online published writing portfolio.
- Provide high-resolution recipe or travel photography (day rate – £500)
- Develop, write and photograph recipes for your site/business (from £250 per recipe)
- Provide social media promotion of your destination or campaign including but not limited to Tweeting, Instagramming or Facebooking according to a particular schedule and/or using a particular hashtag
- Train/mentor/coach on a variety of aspects of social media and blogging including photography (day rate – £500)
- Speak at a conference or event. Have a look at my full speaking portfolio.
- Host a Twitter chat session (from £200)
- I am willing to consider selling sidebar ads if the product or service is a particularly good fit for my blog but PLEASE NOTE that these will all be nofollow links.
AND WHAT I WILL NOT DO:
- post press releases, videos, or other content on CookSister that I did not generate myself, even for payment
- review or write about an event, product or place that I have not experienced or sampled
- write a product review that does not include a recipe of some sort using that product
- include paid-for links in posts
- fail to disclose that a review or link in a post is sponsored or utilised free samples (This violates trading standards rules, so please do not ever ask me to do so.)
- host giveaways, unless I feel the prize would be of real benefit to my readers (and I reserve the right to charge an appropriate fee for doing so)
- work for free “in exchange for exposure on our website”
- accept unsolicited guest posts
EXAMPLES OF MY PAST WORK WITH BRANDS:
- Press trips:
- Exploring Singapore’s cultural diversity
- my 5-part series of posts on West Sweden
- my series of posts on Atlantis The Palm Dubai
- Recipe development:
- beetroot & goat’s cheese papardelle (for Capricorn goat’s cheese)
- Christmas cake semi-freddo (for Paradise Estates rum cakes)
- smoked salmon & avocado stacks (for Forman & Field)
- pork pibil (for Mexican achiote paste)
- Restaurant reviews: