Helena-Reet: Do you know the feeling that you have been meanly deceived but too ashamed to talk about it?! A story about how the Swedish company Stylewish cheated me, i.e. the BUSINESSMAN Jesper Ekerling is a complete swindler!

Helena-Reet: Do you know the feeling that you have been meanly deceived but too ashamed to talk about it?! A story about how the Swedish company Stylewish cheated me, i.e. the BUSINESSMAN Jesper Ekerling is a complete swindler!

NordenBladet – I hate scandals and dislike having my name connected with scandals. Yet what can one do when one has been outraged, used, been laughed at, offended and when one’s labor remains unrewarded? We are not talking about a significantly large sum, it is rather the idea behind it and the attitude of the „cheating businessman”. I have decided to write about it because now I KNOW what it feels to be deceived and HOW DIFFICULT it is to write about it. Also I hope this would serve as a warning to other bloggers yet unfamiliar with this system and planning to join it!

My first thoughts were that everyone would express malicious joy when I write down my story (well, go ahead then). Women who have been raped are afraid of going to the police office because they feel ashamed and feel that they themselves are perhaps guilty. I started looking for mistakes in myself and found them – and for quite some time couldn’t make up my mind whether I should or should not write about the story. Margus would say that I am „too soft” and that this type of cheat should be reported and given to the court. A trial would entail expenses (OK, that wouldn’t be a problem, since NordenBladet has funds) but the greater problem is the time and energy that it would take, thus I prefer not to go to court because I can use the time a lot more beneficially and profitably and my readers are many enough to regain some peace of mind through sharing with them this story of being deceived.

But what is it that I am talking about? What is Stylewish and who is Jesper Ekerling (full name Hans Jesper Andreas Ekerling)? Style Wish (Stylewish.me) is a so to say intermediary between bloggers and brands. Trust is created through the fact that the brands that he mediates are well known in Scandinavia and mainly with a good image. Yet Stylewish web lacks any kind of user policy and this means that Jesper reserves the right to tell you anything when the time comes to pay you for the work that you have done. You yourself have been naive to join the environment. You yourself have been naive not to conclude a contract before starting to advertise. One thing is sure: you are naive and stupid – he will find a counter argument to absolutely anything that you might claim, to every move that you make. You carry out the advertising hard labor, he will collect cash from the companies for every click, and put it in his pocket and is yet arrogant enough to throw abusive words at you.

How have things been then? I joined Stylewish environment and was accepted (an account about statistics was created for me in the environment). I was able to start creating moodboards/collages about brand products with weblinks to their online shops. You will be able to move the compiled collage code to your website. I created posts with advertisement links in four languages and shared the articles also in my own social media. Besides I created some brand banners. For every unique click made by my readers via Stylewish to those online shops I was supposed to receive a certain sum. Ekerling assured that there will be a payment once the 300SEK threshold was met. Given my web portals this threshold was met in just a few days, while some bloggers advertise the products as long as half a year in order to reach this number of unique clicks. I joined the environment on 2 April and already 10 April was supposed to be reimbursement time. By that day my readers had made 9404 clicks on various advertisement links.

Ekerling calmly let me proceed with advertising the brands and never intervened until on the day he ought to have paid back he finally started finding all kinds of faults.

While I was new to the environment then I sent an email to Ekerling on 11 April wondering how I should proceed – whether I had to send an invoice or whether they themselves would pay according to the statistics of their partners visible in the system. Stylewish counts all clicks made to different links and brands.


Now that it came to talking about money, Ekerling began inventing all kinds of excuses – some were even personally offensive. We exchanged many emails and it already started to look as if the 1400+ euros that his company owed to NordenBladet for the advertisements are not really worth the commitment, time, explanations and correspondence. I removed the links from the articles to end the charity campaign. But let us observe his central arguments why he stuck to the opinion that he need not pay me for the work.

1. To begin with, he announced that there had been over 1000 clicks originating from the same IP addresses (more precisely from 3 IP-s). While I cannot verify that I was coerced to reply that he may remove those from consideration. I have quite a few manic readers on the sites that regularly click Google Analytics banners in order for me to be banned, and the fact that they might as well click those other links is not out of the question. A proper IT system ought to be equipped against those irregularities and ought to count only the first clicks. Google Analytics has expelled me twice and invited me back twice, since they established that it had not been me clicking my own banners.

2. To proceed with, he maliciously and violently started deleting various campaigns and links so that only 7684 clicks remained, worth 11947,51 Swedish crona. I said: „Fine” – let it be like this – and sent him an invoice.

3. Now, right out of the blue, he claimed that I am not an influencer at all, that he hasn’t the slightest idea who I am and that his system is for influencers only. Well isn’t that just great. Having accepted me in the system himself, having observed for the past ten days how I am advertising him, everything being just fine until then and now this excuse. Although that is not relevant in any way, I have sent him my personal statistics and links to my social media. Accidentally my Ohmygossip.se blog is among the 30 most widely read blogs in Sweden and NordenBladet together with OHMYGOSSIP pages amount to Scandinavia’s most extensive social media base platform and outrun most Scandinavian newspapers concerning reader quantity. I have been blogging for 10 years yet I do not take it for granted that EVERYBODY would immediately know me, but this doesn’t mean that when I advertise something, when my readers click on the links, that these somehow do not count and must not be paid for. Also, I hadn’t known what Stylewish exactly is, who would Mr Ekerling be and I am utterly sorry for not having cleared those things earlier and for not searching Google to find out. Now later I have definitely found out from the web about other bloggers who have raised complaints against him and who also have not be reimbursed. Had I done the homework earlier I never would have started collaboration with the company and wouldn’t need to feel low and stupid at the moment.

4. Fourth, he came out with the argument that I am not a Fashion Blogger, that his system is exclusively for the latter. That, too, isn’t true, since even the recommendations from Fashion Bloggers (3) on his site are actually not by fashion bloggers. One of them is a real estate blogger, one doesn’t even exist, and one is a semi-Fashion-blogger yet posting just like me about anything that they find fascinating. Stylewish environment completely lacks guidelines about who and how is expected to join – only the earnings have been described related to advertising this or that brand. Of course it is suspicious that just three users were compiling moodboards/collages besides me and it wasn’t possible to identify them based on their names and whether they owned any blogs or not. NordenBladet and OHMYGOSSIP sites are furnished all in all with over 60 000 fashion, trend and beauty articles – I seriously doubt if there is at all any blogger in Scandinavia who can boast having more posts than that. Also, I belong to the group of a few bloggers that have grown a clothing brand based on the blog platform – Ohmygossip Couture is being marketed all over the world. But let it be…

5. After exchanging lots of emails, after presenting a lot of claims, arguments and giving reasons and after rebuttal of them all he has come to the idea that while I have been posting in four languages then that certainly cannot be done. That his system is only meant for the Swedish target group. I happen to know that quite many bloggers, actually virtually every blogger posts in at least two languages – yet now this has somehow become criminal – I have advertised the brands besides Swedish also in other languages: Finnish, Estonian and English. Where is the end of the harm done?! Perhaps the brands have been overadvertised?! And again, Stylewish takes no responsibility whatsoever. I say – let us only count the clicks coming from Swedish IP addresses (although this is absurd, since all the brands have been represented all over Scandinavia just like the main target group of NordenBladet and OHMYGOSSIP).

6. Sixth, he claimed that I have created a banner that links to an online shop.This is not prohibted, many bloggers do that – any kind of adevertisement is allowed as long as it is clearly distinguished from an ordinary blog post. Besides, on his site he encourages to post ad links everywhere. I have not erred against any of the laws – the ad links have been pointed out and the brand names always mentioned. Whenever a brand is doing CPC advertising then it makes no difference where the clicks come from – whether from a post or from the sidebar. Anyhow, even here I was willing to meet him half way. I thought to myself: okay, this time I give away the money, next time I do it differently. Today I lose the money, but in the long run it is reasonable to have good relations. Being a people pleaser will result in being overriden brutally. I have quit communicating with that person and from now on I intend to act more wisely.

What might other bloggers learn from my negative experience? Always CONCLUDE a contract, however trustworthy the company may appear to you, and INVESTIGATE the background of the company before starting collaboration. There might be bloggers that have positive experience with Stylewish – I am not aware of them – yet my individual experience is really unpleasant, negative to the core. I think that the company that so easily mocks whoever cannot be taken seriously and that the brands and influencers collaborating with the head of such a company should think twice whether they mean to relate their names to anything like that. Jesper could very clearly see from where and how many clicks had been made and if he truly wished for clicks from Swedish fashion blogs only then he might have said so after the first few days and might have quit using the ad account. But to let others advertise while observing it with pleasure and then only afterwards find all the excuses seems rather low.



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