After my post last week, Why Do Bloggers Continue to Work for Free?, I came across a few more blog posts on the same, or similar, topic. It seems several bloggers were on the same wavelength within days of each other. Because these posts have sparked a lot of conversation amongst my friends and blogging community, I want to share the other posts with you so you can get various perspectives.

• The post about Predatory PR I’ve been waiting to write
• Because some things are worth more than a box of cereal
• What the Next Year Holds for Mom Bloggers + Brands That Court Them
• Money Talk: Should Mom Bloggers Discuss What They Earn?
• When and What Should a Blogger Charge for Their Services?

I have been thoroughly enjoying reading the responses, reactions, and thoughts of everyone who has added to the conversation in one way or another – whether in the comments of these posts, on twitter, or via private conversations. There’s still a lot to think about and figure out. Both brands and bloggers have good points, but hopefully, we are all working together to carve out some solutions.

Just today, I received the results of a recent survey conducted by Izea, Inc. The 2010 State of Social Media Sponsorships provides some very insightful information and statistics related to sponsored content and blogging for money. In fact, it also takes compensated tweets into account. Some interesting points I found in the report:

• 53.2% of social media publishers have accepted compensation for sponsored content
• 71.3% of respondents have been approached with offers for cash, products, or other compensation for social media promotion
• 57.6% have engaged in direct sponsorship
• 35% of those who indicated they were PR, social media, and marketing professionals stated they have no awareness regarding the FTC disclosure guidelines

I find the last bullet point quite shocking. I’m surprised that there is such a high percentage of people in the industry that have no awareness of the FTC guidelines. However, it’s great to see that 57.6% of respondents have already engaged in direct sponsorship.

Let’s continue the conversation. What do you think of the information in this report? How about the other blog posts and perspectives? Do you find some guidance in reading such information or do you have even more questions?

On Sunday, I had the great pleasure of meeting and hanging out with some great local mommies.

To be honest, this was really the first time I got together with a group of moms since I had my daughter. Most of my friends don’t yet have kids and those who do, don’t live close-by.

Since I’m a working mami, I don’t often get to share in the “typical” mommy outings that a lot of stay at home moms attend, such as play dates, mommy & me time, and other mommy meetups.

And, since my daughter doesn’t attend day-care, but is instead taken care of by her abuela, I don’t even get to meet other moms with kids her age.

So when I heard that Ted Murphy of Izea and Wendy Piersall of Sparkplugging.com got together with the folks at Seaworld to offer some local moms a chance to hang out for the day, I jumped!

Want to hear the best part about it all?

They were all bloggers too! Ok, that’s probably the second-best part about it.

The BEST part of it was that it was FREE!

Who did I hang out with?

• @missbritt – Miss Britt
• @morningsidemom – Morningside Mom
• @Military_Mom – Blog 4 Mom
• @eggmarketing – The Marketing Eggspert

All great women, with great families.

The kids were well behaved and the husbands did a pretty good job too. I have to give a special thank you to my husband who was very supportive and took one for the team when he climbed up into the nets & tunnels in Shamu’s Happy Harbor so that the other mommies and I could have a chance to chat.

It was a very fun day and I had a great time sharing with other mommies who had very similar interests, complaints, and celebrations.

Thanks again @tedmurphy and @emom!

Miss Britt and I
image via @eggmarketing

I went to my first tweet-up on Friday night. I was hesitant to go since it was at 10:30 pm and though I’d like to think I’m still a partying, clubbing kinda girl, truth is, that being a mami makes 10:30 my bed-time. Plus you know, there’s the whole I have a daughter thing.

But, there were some big names attending. I saw a tweet late Thursday night (can’t remember from who) that there was a tweet-up scheduled and that Chris Brogan, Wendy Piersall, Brian Clark, Ted Murphy, and Jeremy Shoemaker were all going to be in Orlando. That would be @chrisbrogan, @emom, @copyblogger, @tedmurphy, and @shoemoney in twitter-speak.

Why where they all in Orlando on the same night?

After asking around a bit on Twitter, I found out they were here for an IZEA Blogger Advisory Board Meeting.

So I start thinking…

I want to meet eMom!

I’ve never really seen a tweet-up in Orlando been done.

How often would all these folks be together at the same time and ummm around the corner from me?

I put all my hesitation aside and decided to go.

The result?

Wendy, Susan, and me
Photo via Wendy

I ended up meeting Susan Payton, who was super nice and offered for us to ride together. She already knew Wendy from writing on her Sparkplugging network. Wendy greeted me with a hug, not a handshake. Great, isn’t it?

I also got a chance to talk with Chris Brogan who made me laugh when he said that Orlando is “a cultural vacuum cleaner.” I told him I am Puerto Rican, so I guess I proved his point. He later asked me on twitter if that was rude.

All in all, it was a great time and I’m glad I went. I know I could have done better in talking about ModernMami.com, but I guess I was a little nervous. But, hopefully my face/name will be remembered a bit.

Do you have any tweet-up experiences to share? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.