In this day and age, sponsorships is pretty much an essential for making a mark in the beauty scene. But as the old adage goes, “one rotten apple spoils the bunch.” In this case, shadiness from both parties (brands and influencers) have pretty much made sponsorships synonymous with SELL-OUT. For fuck’s sake, how and why was it so hard to disclose that a company sent you free shit to promote or review, really?

But because brands wanted the promotion to be organic and people realized just how much money was willing to be thrown out, the floodgates of unethical practices opened and there seemed to be no stopping it, until people began to feel jaded and complaints were filed. Frankly, there was no stopping the gravy train until people felt a certain type of way and the FTC decided it needed to bring down the hammer to take some heat off its own back.

So what’s the point of today’s post? You see, I previously mentioned that I would never do sponsorships – ever. The idea of being sponsored is enough to cause people to turn their noses up in disgust because of the fiasco mentioned in the beginning. Aw hell, the moment that someone mentions they got sponsored is enough to get them labeled as a sellout. Any shred of credibility is thrown into a dumpster fire – even if the sponsored party follows the rules of disclosure.

There are products or brands that I’ve consistently mentioned as favorites because there is an aspect of two about them that I genuinely love or enjoy using. The idea of getting sponsored by them has certainly crossed my mind – might as well get something out of promoting them, right? But in the long run, I kept wondering if it was worth sacrificing whatever credibility I can muster in the ocean of beauty-related social media. There’s also the fact that certain contracts forbid people from mentioning anything negative about the product or service 😒.

My head is so far removed from the ideas of sponsorships and influencers that I hadn’t realized that I inadvertently signed up to be one, albeit I was hardly active. I even got the badge that tells me I’m one. 😐

Dealspotr Marketplace brands itself as the LinkedIn of influencers – I was approached by one of their marketing team members and what drew me in was the idea that they were essentially akin to LinkedIn. I didn’t care about the promo codes, earning points to boost my marketability, or getting paid – call me crazy, but free money is a misnomer.

My brain decided that today, I was gonna dust off the old Dealspotr Marketplace from my memory’s shelves and take a look at how it’s changed since I signed up for it. And lemme tell you – I am definitely not the type of personality to go in there and do the grind to get noticed by brands. I like to think that my posts are more curated in the sense that if I really believe in a service or product, I am going to consistently talk about them.

My profile on Dealspotr is pretty much non-existent and a blink-and-you-miss. I still wonder if I wanna do the grind and put in work to get my score up, but the requirements from brands these days are more geared towards videos – a medium that I pretty much called quits on with no regret because it required time that I simply had no means of sparing towards.

I also couldn’t imagine being so attached to an online presence that I’d be so removed from the real world. There’s just too much happening these days.

And that’s okay – even if the green-eyed monster tries to tell me otherwise.