What the FTC Wants: Full Financial Disclosure

The Federal Trade Commission is requiring bloggers to post information about where they get their money. For us, it’s not much but I gotta do it, so here it is.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’m not going to promote crappy items, but if you question it, this disclosure allows you to make an informed decision on whether you want to believe me, or think I’m full of crap.

Here is how my compensation works around here:

Non-monetary compensation that the FTC couldn’t give a rat’s ass about:

  • Comments – I love them! Keep it up!
  • Emails – Believe it or not, I will reply to every one of them. You can get an amazing amount of info out of me through email.
  • Sharing – Let’s spread the word and together we can take over the world
  • Building community – I’ve met some really awesome people offline and online from this blog.

Monetary compensation – what the FTC wants – and that supports my seed addiction:

  • Affiliate Links

I am an Amazon.com affiliate. What it means is that I’ll post a link to items that I recommend that will direct you to Amazon’s website. If you use that link directly, Amazon will know that I gave it to you and then a small percentage of the money (4-6%) you spend will go into my account. Nothing changes for you though. The price for the item remains the same, I just get a cut of the profit. This is a great way to support our blog. Bonus is that you don’t even have to buy what I recommend. As long as you click through my link to Amazon you can buy something else that isn’t related and I will still receive a cut. Of course, I won’t recommend anything I don’t use and love, but you’re free to make your own choice and still throw a bit my way without actually having to spend extra money.

  • Tip Jar

These are direct tips from you that help keep the blog up, running, and annoying-ad free. I don’t expect anything but it really warms my heart when someone gives us a direct donation of even $1.

  • Free Stuff

One of the awesome things about being a blogger is that I get free stuff. Well, so far just free books, but I’m a book nerd and relish new books coming my way. I can see Tom grimacing at this while he thinks about our overloaded bookcases and random books stuffed in every random place in our house.

These free books I review on the blog but I will always give you my honest opinion about them. Sometimes I also review books that I purchased if I feel it has something special to share. Sometimes I’m given the opportunity to do a giveaway and sometimes I self-sponsor giveaways, especially for books that have similar information to other books I own. It all just about evens out.

  • Advertisements, Sponsored Posts, Inline Text Ads, and Graphic Ads

I don’t include any of them here because they all annoy the hell out of me. I get a lot of inquiries from companies trying to pose as fellow bloggers. What they want is to write a crap post that’s kind of related to our content with a bunch of links to their site. Homey don’t play that. I do allow for guest posts from fellow bloggers, but there is no compensation for them.

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One thought on “What the FTC Wants: Full Financial Disclosure

  1. Just the website I need.
    I have to soon remove a very dear but large invasive tree in my front yard. The good news is that I will now have a lot more sun on my lot to grow more fruit bearing trees.
    It’s about a 100′ x 100′ lot in a older suburban neighborhood with a lot of mixed styles of housing and landscaping. I would like to replace the tree and redo front yard in a grove style (citrus? mango? lychee?starfruit ) to create shady area with lower canopy trees that blossom and fruit. I saw some of this in Ojai and Santa Barbara area( which is quite distant from me now) but can’t find any pictures to show anyone what I’m talking about. I would appreciate it if anyone has any pics or wants to share their thoughts on this plan or thinks the whole idea is too weird and will give me some good reasons why.

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