If you’re a blogger, you might have wondered whether you should have insurance of some type, especially if blogging is your main source of income. Do bloggers need insurance? This post takes a look.
Why Do Bloggers Need Insurance?
There are quite a few reasons bloggers need insurance to protect themselves and their business should untoward anything happen.
Having blogging insurance can help with lots of different aspects of your business.
In fact, more recently some brands are requesting that bloggers have personal indemnity insurance before agreeing to work with them and some freelancing platforms, such as YunoJuno require it before you can sign up.
Virtual Assistant Services
Many bloggers offer VA services alongside their blogs. This would usually include things like writing blog posts, creating social media posts and answering emails.
Imagine if a blogger were to accidentally share something controversial or inappropriate while working on these services for a brand, accidentally, instead of sharing it to their own personal page.
The brand could lose thousands of followers and have incurred irreparable damage to its reputation. This in turn could result in a loss of sales.
In this instance, the brand may choose to pursue legal action depending on how much damage was caused.
Having insurance in place would mean that the blogger would be covered for things like legal costs and legal representation should they need it. Of course, we’d all hope things wouldn’t ever get that far, but it’s always better to have these things in place just in case.
Copyright Infringement
Whether you’ve been accused of copyright infringement or you’ve found that another person has been stealing and using your images or content, having insurance means you are protected when it comes to copyright infringement.
I’ve touched on copyright infringement in a couple of other posts which you can read here:
Scam Image Emails: What To Look Out For
How To Protect Your Images As A Blogger
Equipment
As a blogger, you have some expensive equipment that you should get insured in case of damage, loss or theft.
You could choose to cover items such as your laptop, PC or Mac, Camera and other photography equipment, mobile phone, and video equipment
Invoice Chasing
One thing I love about my insurance is that it will help chase unpaid invoices as long as they are over £200. Invoices not being paid is something that happens a lot as a blogger and the endless chasing and getting nowhere can be frustrating, especially if the invoice is for a large sum of money.
Knowing I could get legal support with this should I need it is reassuring and I often find saying something like ‘If this invoice isn’t paid within 7 days I’ll pass it on to my legal team’ helps it magically get paid.
Where To Get Insurance For Bloggers
I have my Blogger Insurance With Dinghy* (this is my affiliate link, if you sign up using this link then we both get a £25 Amazon Voucher) for a few reasons.
First, it’s nice to see insurance that is actually aimed at bloggers and that understands their needs.
Despite blogging and associated freelancing roles becoming more popular, it’s still pretty rare to find it listed as an occupation when filling out forms online.
Next, is that both Dinghy’s Personal Indemnity Insurance and Public Liability Insurance come with Freelance Assist which, as mentioned above, can help you chase invoices but also comes with other benefits such as help with taxes and will pay you if you have to take time off work for jury duty.
Finally, with Dinghy you can pause your insurance if you need to. Freelancing can be very up and down in terms of how much work we have coming in so it’s great to know payments can be stopped if there are long periods where you’ve decided to take a break from blogging.
How Much Does Blogger Insurance Cost?
Here’s a breakdown of how much blogger insurance costs with Dinghy. Of course, you can get quotes from a range of providers should you so wish, but I think Dinghy is one of the few that actually specifically cater to bloggers and freelancers.
My insurance costs £0.49 per day or £14.59 including Insurance Premium Tax.
It covers me for up to £100,000 in Personal Indemnity and £100,000 in Freelance Assitance.
You’ll need to do some research to find out exactly which cover suits what you do. For example, I work from home and don’t ever travel to visit clients or have clients in my home, so I didn’t go for public liability insurance.
I hope this post has given you some idea of the reasons getting insurance might be a good idea as a blogger.
