“Because I’m worth it” was made famous by cosmetics company L’Oréal. The slogan, which has been repeated by everyone from Jane Fonda to Jennifer Aniston, last year celebrated its 40th birthday but could soon become a battle cry among travel bloggers.

It seems that travel bloggers are increasingly becoming annoyed at what they see as exploitation. The problem is that they feel increasingly annoyed at what they see as large travel companies asking them to do stuff for nothing.

One blogger, Lizzie Cernik aka BaggageGirl, says: “I am fed up of being asked to write for nothing by people/brands who ‘love’ my blog.”

It is easy to see why it happens. The desperate focus on search engine optimisation means that brands are keen to host original content on their websites, helping them to push their sites up the rankings on Google. Some have turned to their customers (see my earlier post on Ramblers Holidays and their creation of a community of storytellers). Others see travel bloggers as a better bet, thinking that they can at least string a proper sentence together. That may not always be the case but that’s a different story.

So should bloggers be paid to write guest posts? (Admission: We’ll put our own hands up here – some of our blogger friends have written guest posts for us here for nothing.)

In a moral sense, the answer is clearly yes. If a company wants to use blog content to help it sell holidays and make money, those responsible for creating the content should share in the increased wealth.

However, the reality is that bloggers are at the mercy of the laws of supply and demand. In the days, now hidden in the mists of time, when I started writing about travel in print, the barriers to entry were high – think feisty commissioning editors. That meant the community of people writing about travel was relatively small and experts could command decent rates for getting their words into print.

Blogs – oh so easy to set up - have commoditised travel writing and supply of expert writing has shot up. Anyone can now declare themselves a travel writer and set up a blog of their trip around the world or about their obsession with Outer Mongolia’s natural splendour. Sites like TripAdvisor have helped fuel this inexhaustible supply. That is why rates for travel writing have tumbled and, in some cases, have reached zero.

Yet there is hope. Excellent travel writing still attracts a premium and travel bloggers who can write very well and know their field inside out are starting to realise the value of what they do and are demanding to be paid for their expertise or, at the very least, that they should get something out of the deal, greater exposure to a new audience, say, in lieu of pay. And that is entirely as it should be.