The ugly side of blogging: pr freebies

I've been thinking about addressing some issues about blogging, but always kept postponing it- partly because I wasn't sure how many of you would find it interesting, but mainly from fear I might get hate by fellow bloggers.

However, I feel the time is right for me to come clean;
some things have to be said.

This time, I'm going to concentrate on the controversial subject of pr freebies.

Being a "beauty blogger" for the past 2 years (please allow me this self-imposed term for the sake of this post!), I've received a couple of emails from companies stating they'd like to send me a free product. Now I'm not going to lie, it's an extra little perk to be sent free products you're interested to try out. Us bloggers spend a lot of time on our blogs, so in such cases it feels like we get something in return for our hard work.

[You be the judge whether these reviews are objective or not. Granted, one would feel obliged to write only positive things about a product he/she's given for free- but personally speaking, I don't depend on pr freebies to satisfy my love for cosmetics. Also, I've already turned down an offer for a free product I wouldn't spend my money on it in the first place.]

    image from Google

However, nowadays there's an alarming growing "trend" among a few bloggers (both
well-established and new ones): they take the initiative to send emails to brands, requesting free products to feature in their blogs. Without touching the moral aspect of this issue (is the person greedy? not greedy?), it raises a lot of questions:

1. Can you really be objective over sth YOU have asked to be sent for free?

2. Can you really blame a pr company for expecting nothing but a positive review, since YOU are the one who pulled the strings for this transaction?

3. Are the new FTC guides adequate enough, so that each blogger is compelled to state whether he/she contacted the brand to receive freebies?

I'm not pointing fingers to anyone in particular- above all, blogging is a democratic medium, everyone is free to do his/her thing. But ultimately, it's the blogging world in its entity that is being affected by a minority of bloggers, who take advantage of their popularity (big or small) to expand their cosmetics collection on zero cost.

Beauty bloggers have started a good thing; there is now a growing community of women (and men) all around the world exchanging ideas on a subject they share a common interest, and to have a few people messing with the beauty bloggers' credit for the rest who play fair is, well... unfair.

I'd love to read what you think about bloggers asking for freebies, whether you're blogging yourself or you're just a reader of beauty blogs. Would you consider it a fair thing to do? Are you interested in blog reviews, no matter if the author has asked to receive for free the products featured?

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this out-of-the-ordinary post!

Evi   xx