I'm calling it work there because brands/companies do approach me to advertise for them, and I would love to get paid for it. That is work in my opinion. The fact that I don't get paid for it puts it back to a hobby level, and the fact that I do it anyway (but only for brands/companies I really enjoy doing business with) puts it as a passion project. If I buy some really good cheddar from my local artisan cheese shop, I'm going to put it on my Instagram whether they pay me to do it or not, because it's really good cheese and people need to know about it.

We originally started doing it because our city didn't have any good digital media outlets, so we knew there were all these cool events and local businesses all around us but no one was talking about them. So as long as we were already doing the research to figure out what was happening in our city, we figured we might as well share that. We started it with no intention on making money, the thought never crossed our minds until we started getting demands from companies to advertise for them. After that we started asking for payment from anyone who demanded we talk about them, but even though we rarely successfully get paid, we still talk about the events and businesses we want to talk about. We just ignore demands that don't come with perks, invites, discounts, or cash attached.

I guess the motivation is kind of selfish. We live in a place that is commonly understood to be very old and conservative in demographic but we know there are a lot of cool younger people around too. We want to 1) show that our area is cool and we have young and cool people, and 2) attract more young and cool people to the area. It'd be nice to get paid, but there are these other benefits that keep us going too.