Blogger FAQs

What is The Shelf?

What is The Shelf?! Only the most awesome blogging search engine to have ever exist in the history of the universe (this isn’t an exaggeration). Simply put, we are an online resource for brands to connect with bloggers (and vice versa).

Is The Shelf the greatest blogger search engine ever?

Didn’t we cover this already? Yes!

Why would I (as a blogger) want to connect with brands?

Exsqueeze you! Why wouldn’t you want to connect with brands? Brands can broaden your audience, run campaigns with you, give you special deals and opportunities just because you are especially knowledgeable when it comes to a particular topic, like fashion, cooking, raising kids, extra extra. The sky’s the limit! Don’t believe us, read more about how brands and blogs work together here. Still not convinced?

What types of bloggers should join The Shelf?

We support a number of verticals now! Fashion, beauty, wedding, lifestyle, mommy, travel, and food. DIY blogs are the next group to be supported!

How do I get on the list?

All you need to do is click here. Sign up using your name, blog, url, and email. Boom! You’re in. Let the games begin!

The infamous confirmation email…

We know. Email confirmations, on the annoying scale, are equivalent to not fitting into your jeans in the morning or someone walking glacially slow in front of you. They are the worst. But, we need to make sure you are a real person. If you don’t get your email confirmation, shoot us an email and we’ll get you hooked up manually.

The last step before you’re signup is complete is the blogger badge…

We need you to have a blogger badge to ensure you are the owner of the URL that you sign up with. Otherwise, we risk having people sign up with URLs that do not belong to them. This would cause total mayhem! And we can’t have that, now can we?!

I’m having trouble installing the badge.

If you’re just having trouble doing the installation, no worries, it happens. If you’re on Blogspot (Blogger) its super easy. Copy the code from our badge page. Then go to your blogger account. Click LAYOUT. Then ADD GADGET. Select HTML/JAVASCRIPT. Here, you will be able to paste the code into the popup. If you are still having troubles, shoot us a message, and we can verify your account another way.

I don’t want your darn badge on my site.

Hey now! That’s not very nice. While we are a little hurt, luckily for you we will do just about anything to help you out (within reason, unfortunately we can not confirm Beyoncé as your wedding singer). Send us an email and we’ll get you verified another way.

Getting a new badge & our affiliate program.

If you lost your badge, you can go here and look at the middle column.  That contains the link needed to get your new badge.  That page also contains info about our affiliate program which you should totally take advantage of.  

I installed the badge, but you sent me an email that said “Badge not found”…

Much to our dismay, this can happen every now and again. In the body of the email there is a link that let’s you try one more time. If that doesn’t work, all you have to do is respond to that email and we’ll get back to you within the day, because we are prompt like that!

While we are on the subject, if you ever message us and we don’t get back to you, something earth shattering might have happened to us (we are talking post-apocalyptic status). Please message us again! We would never intentionally ignore anyone!

The badge is too big.

Well, that is no good at all! Not to worry, it’s actually a very easy fix. Here is a quick lesson in code 101, simple look for “max-width:200px;” in the little code snippet that we gave you. You will see that text twice in the code. In both places, you can edit the number so that the badge will be smaller. For example if you want the badge to half the size that it currently is, change the number from “200” to “100.” Make sure to save! Next time you check out your page you will notice a much daintier version of the badge.

What happens after I join?

You will be greeted by several dancing elves, followed by a mariachi band, ending with an elaborate fireworks display. Kidding. We wish we could do that for you. What we can do is create your basic profile. It takes about a week for your account to be processed because we are perfectionists to the core and want to make sure all the info we collect from your blog is 100% accurate. Please get in touch if this process takes longer than a week!

As soon as the profile has been generated…

You can go in and customize it to make it yours! Add info about who you are, how you work, anything to add that little extra spice that reveals how amazing and unique you are!

Contact info

Sign up with whatever email you fancy, but double check your profile to make sure that whatever email is listed there, is the email you would like to have brands contact you through. We know many of you work with agents. If you have an agent that should be emailed about opportunities, update your profile using their email rather than your personal email.

While we’re on that same topic…

If you are an agent wanting to get your blogger listed, contact us! We will set you up so that all campaign requests will get sent directly to you and only you.

I’m a blogger and I’m already getting traffic from your site (Yay!) but I haven’t joined yet… Why is that?

Our system makes it super easy for brands to set up blogger campaigns. One of the biggest requirements for this is coming up with a big spreadsheet of potential bloggers for the outreach process. When a brand joins, we give them the option of submitting a list of blog urls to us comprising of bloggers they like or have worked with in the past. That way, even if a blogger is not on our platform, they can still reach out to them using our messaging system. This helps the brand to stay organized as all of their messages will be maintained on their The Shelf account.

If I’m already getting some traffic from your site, should I still join?

Duh, of course you should join! We love making new friends! But aside from our loyal friendship, if you join you can add all kinds of useful information to your profile: like what types of opportunities you’re looking for, style tags so brands have an easier time finding you, and very soon you’ll be able to see how many views your profile gets as well as who is checking you out. Lots of fun stuff!

The Media Kit

Many bloggers create a media kit by hand. Barf. Manual labor, no thanks! If you put together your profile on The Shelf, you can use us as your media kit! Talk about killing two birds with one stone. Your profile can act as your “blogger resume.” It will give an overview of your style, bio, past collaborations, brands you wear, extra extra. You can also include content on your profile that helps reinforce your image and style. Sign up, try us out. If you don’t like something shoot us an email IMMEDIATELY! Yes, that is an order. We are unnaturally obsessed with feedback. When we get good suggestions, we act on them. We are a small, feisty, little team, ready to make your experience as good as possible.

Opportunities

Brands join our platform so that they can work with bloggers. Many of these brands will also put up a post about what they’re looking for. As a blogger on our platform, you’ll be able to browse these posts and apply for ones that look fun!

Exposure to brands you’d like to work with…

It’s a busy world out there in the blogosphere and it’s sometimes hard to get seen within all of the noise. We make it really easy for brands to find you if your style matches theirs. For example, let’s say there is a brand selling inexpensive vintage tees to women. If you’re a female blogger who blogs about vintage brands, and has discussed t-shirts in the past, and you talk about lower-budget finds… then you will be on the top of their list! Brands can fine tune and filter to make sure you are the right blog for them, so they will only reach out accordingly to ensure your time won’t be wasted. Looks like and sounds like a win, win? That’s because it is!

I have some brand-contacts who want to sign up…

Wahoo! Send them over! We’ll give you a big old finder’s fee if they join!!

I haven’t gotten any opportunities yet…

That might be the case, but not for long! We are growing rapidly! At the moment we have about 30 brands who are actively using our site, but we are getting 3-4 signups every single day! As we grow, you will too! Also, when brands reach out to you, they don’t typically mention how they found your blog.

I’m having issues uploading my images.

Oh no! Never fear! This may be happening because you’re on an older browser (like Internet Explorer! Time to upgrade!). Chrome, Firefox, and Safari are pretty safe bets. If you are still having issues, then contact us and we will get everything sorted. If you don’t feel like dealing with it at all, send the images you want to upload to LaurenJ@theshelf.com. Be sure to let her know what section of the site you would like them to show up on (i.e. profile pic, cover image, extra extra).

I’m having issues with the site…

Oh no! Sorry about that!!! It might be a browser problem (see above). Our mobile experience might not be the most pleasant right now. Not to fear, we will be improving that soon. In any case, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’ll get it fixed right away!

I have a question that you didn’t answer in this super extensive FAQs section.

Message us here and we’ll get right back to you!

I have an idea for a super fun feature…

Yay! We love super fun features (who doesn’t?!), contact us here so that we can get started!