Disclosure


This policy is valid from 27 August 2008


This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation. We will and do accept and keep free products, services, travel, event tickets, and other forms of compensation from companies and organizations.


This blog abides by word of mouth marketing standards. We believe in honesty of relationship, opinion and identity. The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post will be clearly identified as paid or sponsored content.

The owner(s) of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers' own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.

This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.

Thanks to Amy for developing these compensation levels, I will be using them as of October 6, 2010.

Compensation Levels

Compensation levels will be stated clearly at the beginning or end of any post that mentions a product, service or location that is covered by any of the levels listed below (or possibly within a post if there are many products listed, such as a gift list).  If no compensation level is listed, it is to be assumed that there was no compensation involved with the post or any products, services or locations mentioned in the post.  For the purposes of these levels user does not consider transportation to and from a local event, or food consumed at an event, as compensation.  Compensation refers to cash, gift certificates, products, or services.
  • Level 1: The product or service mentioned was provided to Renee free of charge (or at a considerable discount not available to the public).
  • Level 2: The product or service mentioned was provided free of charge and Renee was compensated to post about the product or service.*
  • Level 3: Renee was compensated for inserting links from a specific website into this post.
  • Level 4: Renee was compensated for including a product in pictures or videos in this post.
  • Level 5: Renee was compensated for attending the event mentioned in this post.
  • Level 6: Renee was compensated for posting about the event mentioned in this post.
  • Level 7: Renee was provided with transportation, food, lodging, tickets, and/or other incidentals for the trip mentioned in this post.
  • Level 8: Although not specifically compensated for this post, Renee has an ongoing relationship with a company or person connected with a product, service or location mentioned in this post that the blogger feels may have influenced his/her decision to post about it.
  • Level 9: Products or services were provided to Renee to give away in a contest.
  • Level 10: Products or services were provided to Renee to give away in a contest and to keep for his/her own use or for review.
  • Level 11: Renee was compensated for administering this contest.
  • Level 12: The product or service mentioned advertises directly with Renee’s website.
  • Level 13: This is a sponsored post.  Renee was compensated to write this post.  While her opinions in the post are authentic, talking points may have been suggested by the sponsor.

* A note about paid vs. sponsored posts: a paid post simply means that Renee was given some kind of compensation in exchange for writing about a product or service.  A sponsored post indicates that the sponsoring company had a much bigger hand in crafting the post, including seeing and approving the finished post before it is published.  In either case, all opinions are Amy’s own.


Swag

If the blogger is given free products of minimal value at a conference, event or meeting that are being given to all attendees, such as bags, books, water bottles, small product samples, coupons, etc., he/she does not consider these items as compensation and will not necessarily disclose them when talking about a product.


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