My policy on endorsements, reviews, and affiliates
December 3rd, 2009 | by mbhunter |As you may be aware (or not!) the FTC has revised its guide concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising to include social media, which include blogs like the very one you’re reading now.
The short version is that bloggers are required to be explicit about their relationships with advertisers so that you can take it into consideration as you evaluate the opinions I present to you.
This post spells out how I handle these disclosures. There will be a prominent site-wide link to it. I may also refer to this post on other blogs of mine, as the policies there will be the same as they are here.
- Are there advertisements on this site? Why, thanks for asking! Yes, they’re are ads on this site. Like most personal finance bloggers, I earn money through advertisements, and I think they’re pretty easy to spot. The FTC guide, though, is really all about disclosing things that aren’t obviously ads, so I’ll address that now.
- How do I handle paid posts? I’ve only done a very small number of paid posts, and I don’t believe I’ve done any over the past year. (Basically, you’d have to dig to find the ones I’ve done.) How I handled them before (to the best of my knowledge) is that I’ve stated that the subject of the post was a sponsor of the blog, or I’ve disclosed the third-party review broker that paid me for the post. This is how I will handle all future paid posts. I’ll state up front that I’ve been compensated for making a post. Otherwise, you can assume that I have not been paid for writing that post.
- Are guest posts paid? No. Guest posts are not paid posts, ever.
- How do I handle product reviews? On occasion I will receive a product (usually, but not limited to, a personal finance book or some personal finance software) free of charge in exchange for consideration of writing up a review. If I write a review of a product, and I received a review copy free of charge, I’ll say so, as in: “The author’s PR firm was kind enough to send me a copy of X.” (To the best of my knowledge I’ve mentioned it this way with the reviews I’ve already done.)
- How do I handle affiliate programs? Some of the links to various online sellers and service providers from this blog and other blogs of mine are affiliate links. This means that if you click on one of these links, the merchant (or a third party designated by the merchant) records that I sent you to the merchant, and if you do something — like sign up, or buy something — I get paid for facilitating that transaction. I haven’t gone to great lengths to point out each and every affiliate link in the past for a few important reasons: (a) I only will have affiliate links to products or services that I already use myself or would use myself, (b) it sometimes ends up costing you less to click through from my site than if you had gone there directly because of special promotions that the merchants were offering at the time, and (c) it will never cost you more than if you had gone to the site directly. Many of the links from this blog to Amazon.com, EBay.com, Restaurant.com, MyPoints.com, LendingClub.com, ING Direct, credit card offers, MrRebates.com, Intuit products, and almost all of the links on my coupons page are affiliate links. If you have particular questions about affiliate links, you’re welcome to contact me, but here are some ways you can identify which links are likely to be affiliate links:
- The address of the link reads like alphabet soup and doesn’t look like the website you’re being sent to. (You can see the web address before you click on the link by hovering over the link with your mouse pointer, and looking in (usually) the lower left of your browser window.)
- The address has the form http://www.mightybargainhunter.com/r/SOMETHING or http://www.mightybargainhunter.com/ref/SOMETHING.
Again, if you have any questions, you’re welcome to leave a comment, or contact me. Thanks!
