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 straightening 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:
Ways I Get Compensated For My Work On This Blog
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, I get a small percentage of the sale for referring you. Your price is unchanged, and buying stuff you were going to get anyway through affiliate links is a great way to support this blog.
I am an Amazon.com affiliate, and an affiliate of an amazing ebook called Simple Blogging. Amazon is the big one, so I’ll tell you how that works. Affiliate links are tagged with a special code that lets Amazon know you heard about the product from me. If you go on to buy something (almost anything, not just stuff I recommend) from Amazon after clicking through an affiliate link from NW Edible, between 4% and 6% of the cost of whatever you buy will go to support this blog and my raging kale habit at no additional cost to you.
I 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.
- Tip Jar
Direct tips from you, my readers. Thank you! $1? $2? It is all valued beyond belief. Thank you for your direct support. $20? Wow, I’m swooning. You have no idea. I really do buy seeds with these donations.
- Garden Journal
Digital download of my original and comprehensive Garden Journal and Planner. I pay for hosting fees and flats of peaches and canning tomatoes and pickling cucumbers with those sales. Thank you!
- Free Stuff
People send bloggers free stuff. It’s actually one of the greatest things about being a blogger. I get mostly books and magazine subscriptions. I am particularly partial to my free subscription to Grit Magazine.
Sometimes I review free items, and when I do I always give my unbiased and honest opinion. Nobody gets to tell me what to say about something on this blog. Ever. 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.
- Advertisements, Sponsored Posts, Inline Text Ads, Graphic Ads and other Sneaky Shit
There are currently no graphic or text ads on this site. 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.
There are no graphic ads on this site because 1) 95% of them are damned annoying, and 2) because finding direct sponsorship that looks good and fits within the values I hold for myself and this blog is almost impossible. I reserve the right to put up graphic ads if Peaceful Valley Farm or Territorial Seed Company or Raintree Nursery or some other company I’m 100% in love with comes a’knocking. Until then, this is an ad-free zone.
If you have any questions about any of this, you can ask. To the great chagrin of the sneaky text ad placement people, there’s nothing to hide here.
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