ProBlogger, the popular blog that teaches one how to make a living off blogging, published an interesting guest post from a former beauty/fashion blogger. In the post, the blogger talks about how she was so excited to do "product reviews" and get all sorts of free stuff sent to her by companies.

She even signed an $8,000 deal with, "a large pharmaceutical company to write six posts for them to try educating readers on the benefits of their product...the only thing I had to do was to get the copy reviewed by the pharmaceutical company to ensure that I wasn't using any medical words in the wrong way."

But then the economy took a turn for the worse and the blogger's freebie parade slowed down. What did she learn? People were actually asking her questions like how many unique visitors her site had and to send links of recent, relevant coverage before sending products. That didn't work out, so the blogger got into another niche, "healthy eating and healthy lifestyles," which she said worked out much better.

"One company (which manufactures supplements) that contacted me to send products for review also wanted to know how much it would cost to sponsor spots on my site. They actually wanted to pay to have banners on my site and not only receive a free review!" she said.

Um, free review? Companies aren't supposed to pay publications for product reviews, or to influence them. Although it does happen. This post, in essence, sums up the difference between how media has traditionally worked: build audience/content, sell advertising against said audience/content - versus how it is unfortunately working for some bloggers: the content is the advertising.