I had a conversation last year with a blogger that fits the exact description you've mentioned. Because all the bloggers in my niche are like that as well.
Here's how the conversation went.
Them: "I don't take paid guest posts, and I don't publish syndicated content."
Me: "So you won't take $200 for a guest post"
THem: "that's right. <paraphrase>I'm so virtuous, money can't sway me </paraphrase"
Me: "What if it's Friday afternoon, you're headed off for the weekend, you want some easy content - what if I offered you $5000 to publish a syndicated press release, where you just lead with 'I caught this on the web, though readers would be interested, I'm republishing verbatem'. Would you take the $5K, publish, and go have a good weekend?"
Them: "pause."
You know the punchline to that joke right?
In short, don't believe them when they say they don't take money. We all get paid. You just haven't offered enough.
Here's what you need to do. You need to find some other way to get at these bloggers. It's not easy - but build something ELSE that lets you call them and say 'hey, I flog credit cards, yeah, I'm dirty and ugly, but I have this OTHER thing that you might be interested in'. If you can find that OTHER thing, whatever it is, now you can call every single one of them and open a conversation.
The rest of your questions follow from that initial contact. The ultra high end bloggers I rounded up 2-3 years ago now contact me for stories in my niche. They are now becoming mainstream journalists, so I get mentioned in the press. I don't do anything to make that happen, they just call me.
I had a reporter call me last night at 10pm with a mad rush. He was quoting me in a story with a deadline of tomorrow. He'd contacted one of my customers for a picture for the story, they couldn't make it - so I had to hook him up at 10pm with another happy customer of mine, and coordinate a photo shoot today. That reporter? Just a blogger I hooked up with a year or two ago for 'other' reasons.
This is stuff my wife calls 'why are you working on stuff that doesn't make us any money". Well, because that other stuff is what connects me to the bloggers in my niche, who later become mainstream reporters, who later quote me in all the mainstream press.
Now we're putting together a book. I have a professional journalist who is going to act as editor. And I've got 5 of the biggest bloggers online writing chapters on their speciality. And oh yeah, I'm writing a chapter about my product. Then we're going to sell the heck out of that book across all their blogs. End result, I've got all the top bloggers doing my tom sawyer work - selling my articles on their sites.
All of this came from calling them and offering them something else. And fwiw, my industry is about as competitive as what you've mentioned, and certainly as disliked/filled with spam/affiliates/etc.
So, in summary, forget what you're selling completely. Find something you can offer the snob bloggers as you call them - something innovative and attractive to them. Then start calling them (and you should call them, not email).
