The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a strange and intrusive ruling that basically seems to say that bloggers must disclose when they write about a product they have received for free or that they have been paid to talk about.
Let me make something clear: I’d love to be paid to write on my website–please don’t hesitate to send money my way! But, alas, it hasn’t happened yet. Everything on this site is (fortunately or not) all me.
Sometimes people or companies send me products (e.g., books) and I’ll review them on my website, though most of the reviews on my site are of products I’ve bought with my own money. But note that if I don’t like the product I’ll say so. Usually I only write about products I like, so most of my reviews tend to be positive, since I don’t usually write about products I don’t like. See how this works?
If I like it, I say so. If I don’t like it, I say so. And in interest of full disclosure, so you can be fully aware of the possible biases in what you read here, in the future if I receive some sort of sponsorship or get paid to write something, I’ll be sure to disclose it.
Also, because I currently don’t have any sponsorships (see previous paragraph), through the Google AdSense program Google places ads on my site. I don’t pick the ads–Google runs its googly algorithm and determines what ads it wants to place on my site. If you’d like to click on one of those ads, I’m sure Google would appreciate it, but since I don’t pick the ads and can’t necessarily vet the product being advertised, only do so if you want to.
Because writing reviews and maintaining my site takes a lot of time and money, sometimes I use Amazon affiliate links for products on my site. If you use one of my Amazon links and then buy something from Amazon, I’ll receive a few cents from Amazon–there is no cost to you from using one of my Amazon links! Amazon gives me a few pennies for referring you to their site based on a lengthy review I wrote. So, I write for pennies, and I am very appreciative to get them, so please consider using this link to buy something for yourself from Amazon! Thank you!
