![]() The airing of so much personal material bothered people – but many mothers needed such an outlet. One complaint about ‘mommyblogging’, in its early days, was that it was too confessional, too loud, insufficiently respectful of children’s privacy. “You’re basically writing copy for a brand, is what you’re doing.”Īrmstrong makes an interesting point, especially in the genre she’s associated with. “Writing stories around is torturous,” Armstrong said. “I really had to dial that part of me back, when that part of me wanted to come out and dance,” she said.īrands want bloggers to sell the product selling the product necessarily involves a certain kind of bland recommendation. “I did it for as long as I could, until I was like, I cannot be that person any more,” she says, simply.Īsked who “that person” was, Armstrong pointed out that her personal brand as a blogger involved a kind of irreverence (to this day, her Twitter profile reads: “I exploit my children for millions and millions of dollars on my mommyblog”), but many brands weren’t comfortable with her tone. There were tears, and with her child pleading with her, Armstrong decided she could no longer bear the invasive requests of the advertisers. ![]() Most parenting bloggers don’t want to talk about it – to the point of flat-out refusing to discuss it in interviews – because to do so may invite abuse from commenters who say that children are being exploited.Īrmstrong says for her, the breaking point on blogging for a living came when one of her two daughters refused to go on an outing that was part of a sponsored post plan. ![]() Involving children in sponsored content is controversial. And then it was, ‘We need you to show the product.’ And then it was, ‘We need your kids involved in the post.’” Write something around this.’ … And then it was, ‘Well, actually, we need you to show pictures of the product”. “At the beginning, it was, ‘We’re just gonna put the logo at the end of the post. I did it for as long as I could, until I was like, I cannot be that person any more Heather Armstrong “What happened over the last couple of years is the brands have been given a lot more say and a lot more control than they did when I was starting out,” Armstrong said. The problem, Armstrong says, was that because she felt so beholden to them, she was agreeing to do just about anything to keep the advertisers happy. But Armstrong, a single mom who has spoken before about the challenges of making money online, says that revenue was actually less a factor in her decision to retire than what her dependence on advertisers forced her to do. In the 13 years Armstrong has spent blogging, her trolls have grown more aggressive (recently one tracked her down to a hotel she was staying at and slipped a note under the door) and advertising dollars have dwindled.
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