I've been receiving various collaboration offers from Karen Yang over time—cosmetics, skincare, clothing, shoes, all kinds. Usually I try my best to accommodate them because I know my current reach isn't as good as bloggers with larger followings, so I always ask for clear communication beforehand and try to understand the details of future collaborations.
For example, whether they want an image-and-text collaboration or a long-form blog post collaboration—I want to clarify these things first so I know to what extent I can help. But recently I received a collaboration offer that felt not okay to me. Let me be clear: this post is absolutely not meant to attack the other party. I handle and evaluate every offer personally, but their explanation was really unclear, and it's the first time I've formally rejected a collaboration.
When they first messaged me privately, it got classified as spam. I usually check my spam folder periodically, so I replied after some time.
Their initial message was "Could I inquire about collaborating on an article feature?" Using the word "collaboration" made me wonder if they wanted free work or a traffic exchange, so I asked further about what format they had in mind. They responded that they wanted to collaborate from "a blogger's perspective." I was confused—weren't they looking for bloggers in the first place? Why specifically mention wanting it written from a blogger's angle? It didn't make sense to me. They also had typos, but that wasn't the issue.
Then they mentioned they had "developed a fan system tool" and wanted to combine community interaction with marketing (the white area is the tool name, so I pixelated it), asking if I could help write about it. At this point in our communication, I still didn't know what product they wanted me to collaborate on or what exactly I should be writing about.
Based on past examples, at this stage the other party usually provides a "product introduction PowerPoint," highlights, or a relevant website to introduce the product so I can first assess whether collaboration is possible. At first, I thought maybe it was my comprehension issue, but I really wasn't sure what product they wanted to collaborate on. It's not something everyone would immediately understand. I even searched for the company myself before discovering that their "fan system tool" was what they hoped to collaborate on.
Later, their response was just to drop two articles written by Ye Pei-wen from their own company introduction. Of course, I could learn about the product from these two articles, but after evaluating it, I concluded this product was more suitable for e-commerce bloggers, influencers, or businesses with actual products to sell, because the system is marketed as "an O2O marketing tool," allowing you to distribute coupons or send products to fans through interactive games.
From the start, they defined it as a physical-to-physical tool. So approaching me—a blogger who specializes in writing articles and book reviews with no physical products or storefronts—seemed like a poor fit. I honestly didn't know how I could help, or how I'd even use this kind of tool to interact with my audience.
Moreover, they never clarified "what form of collaboration" they wanted, nor did they ask about my budget. This made me suspect they wanted free collaboration with a feature. Plus, the articles they provided were internal company introductions, with examples only of other physical brand collaborations. This offered me no real benefit and probably none for them either. This isn't the kind of collaboration I'm comfortable with, so I explained my thoughts and directly provided my rates.
However, they responded by asking me "approximately how much?" I was confused why they'd ask me again, since I'd been very clear earlier about budget and format. At that point, I already sensed there might be communication difficulties with this collaboration, and mentally prepared to reject it, but I still responded.
What they said was that they didn't know how many words the article should be... So let me organize how I've handled inquiries in the past, and how to do it better to avoid communication difficulties.
- First assess product type and exposure expectations:
Based on past practices, business owners should estimate the collaboration format and word count needed beforehand, then both parties can negotiate and find a middle ground. If they have an internal budget, they should provide a rough estimate and discuss it together. If a collaboration proceeds like this one, it might make others wonder whether the company itself doesn't have a clear understanding of their own product and standard collaboration practices—which creates hesitation about continuing the partnership.
- Whether the collaboration partner fits the product:
Business owners should initially explain why they chose this collaboration partner, what they've observed and understand about them, to establish trust and show you're not just shooting in the dark. Provide a preliminary product introduction and explain the initial expectations for how much help you're asking for, so the other party can assess whether they have the capacity to handle it. Rather than having the collaboration partner constantly guess at your intentions, they might lose enthusiasm even if they initially wanted to collaborate.
- Case references:
I think providing the company's own official website and internal staff-written articles isn't ideal. Instead, you should provide cases you've collaborated on before, because that way it's hard for the collaboration partner to imagine what level of work they could produce. When seeking collaboration partners, you should similarly assess where they can excel. If from the start, you hope I could explain social media phenomena and combine case analysis, I'd feel more capable, but the fact that I had to propose this idea makes people question whether the business owner understands their collaboration partner well enough.
In the end, I rejected this collaboration. I felt a bit guilty about it, but I think even if you're just an assistant, you represent the company's image. To this day, I still don't know the company background or what benefits the product could bring. It feels like a shame, so I've organized this communication process as a reference for others.
Thank you to everyone willing to give me opportunities :)
