The Federal Trade Commission, in an effort to protect consumers from unscrupulous advertising practices, requires bloggers to disclose monetary or goods-in-kind relationships they have with companies.
This is a good thing: way too many mommy bloggers were recommending amazing hair products that didn’t really work because they got a free sample in the mail, and whole swaths of readers were taken in.
Oh, the humanity!
So, my darling FTC, here’s how the compensation scheme works around here:
Compensation The FTC Doesn’t Care About But I Really Do
- Your comments – it’s like paying your blogger in EgoBucks. We love that.
- Your emails – can’t always return every one but value and appreciate you for reaching out. Thank you.
- You sharing my posts all the hell over every social media site you participate in – this is like EgoBucks with Compound Interest. We love that more.
- Meeting other bloggers. Sometimes even in person – actual offline friends happen through an online community! Modern miracle.
Compensation the FTC Really Cares About and Requires I Disclose To You
Affiliate Links
Some of the links out from this site are affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link to a company or product and then end up buying something, Your price is unchanged but I get a small percentage of the sale for referring you.
As of September, 2019, I am an affiliate of the following companies:
- Amazon.com – You know them. They sell everything. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
- The Garden Coop – A small family business out of Portland, they sell complete, downloadable plans for their attractive, secure and DIY-friendly chicken coop and run designs. Our chicken coop is built on The Garden Coop plans. It’s chicken approved, kid approved and neighbor approved. We’ve been really happy with the design.
I only link to things I genuinely like and use (unless I’m being ironic and linking to $2500 sunglasses). No one has any influence over the items I link to but me, and affiliate links do not impact the editorial content of this blog. Ever.
Free Stuff and Giveaways
People send bloggers free stuff. It’s actually one of the greatest perks to being a blogger. I get mostly books and magazine subscriptions. I am particularly partial to my free subscription to Grit Magazine. (Update Feb 2018: currently no free Grit. Sad Panda.)
When I talk about something I got for free, I’ll tell you who sent it to me, and that I didn’t pay for it. Because that’s important, don’t you think?
Sometimes publishers or authors sponsor giveaways of their books here to get the word out about their product. I think these giveaways are great! Who wouldn’t want a chance to win free books? Sometimes, on my own dime, I self-sponsor giveaways, usually to commemorate big deal moments on the blog, like that time when I hit 1000 Facebook Fans. When a giveaway happens, it is always clear who is sponsoring it.
Graphic and Contextual Ads
Update: As of the February, 2018 redesign, there are no graphic, sponsor, or contextual ads on this site. That’s not a promise that there never will be again. But right now as I type this, NWEdible is ad-free.
Please consider whitelisting NWEdible in your ad blocker (and you should totally install an ad blocker if you don’t have one). Some of the small features of my site – like social buttons and the newsletter subscription box – disappear if you have ad block enabled even though they aren’t ads.
In the past, I have cautiously accepted outside sponsorship and advertising on this site. I’m proud to have had some of the most respected, ethical names in gardening, poultry keeping and food preservation as sponsors. (Shout out to High Mowing Organic Seeds, reCAP Mason Jars, Scratch and Peck Feeds and Mantis Garden Tools.)
In the past I’ve placed contextual ads on my site. Contextual ads show you ads based on what you’ve been looking for or searching on the web. I don’t host or have access to that information. So if you see an ad for megayachts on my site, it’s because Google thinks you need a megayacht, not because I do. In fact, I don’t even know what ads you’re looking at. That megayacht is between you and your conscious.
Inline Text Ads, Paid Backlinks and other Sneaky Shit
There are no paid text ads or backlinks on this site and there never have been. People want to pay me to sneak text link ads into my posts without you knowing they are ads, and they want to pay me to write crap fake blog posts that “just happen to talk about” the product they want me to sell to you. They also want to pay me to publish the fake crap blog post they wrote to promote their artificial turf company…or whatever.
These requests happen all…the…time. Consider that your inside look at the underbelly of blog monetization in the real world. Gross, huh? I tell these people to go straight to spam hell, or don’t get back to them, which is basically the same thing.
The Bottom Line
I have spent an inordinate amount of time debating how to monetize and with whom to partner because I take my responsibility as your friendly (and trustworthy!) local blogger very seriously.
So if you have any questions about any of this, just ask. To the great chagrin of the sneaky text ad placement people, there’s nothing to hide here.
Thank you.