A gigantic tip of the old blog hat to Tim Ferriss for creating a humorous way to deal with this subject… and then being awesome enough to offer to let others use it!
This blog is not primarily financially driven (in and of itself). I put it up in 2006 to build a community, test theories for our strategic marketing practice, and generally have a place to rant about any and everything that doesn’t fit on our small business marketing blog.
That said, beginning December 1, 2009, the FTC requires bloggers to provide disclosures whenever there could be hidden interests or unspoken biases related to recommendations.
First, the obvious: I am a business owner, marketing consultant, trainer, mentor and serial entrepreneur.
Second, the less obvious: Per the FTC rules, if I interview someone and they grab the bill for lunch, I would need to specify this. Ditto if I use an Amazon link that gets me 8 cents instead of an Amazon link that gets me 0 cents. If someone gives me a comfy t-shirt with a logo and I wear it in a photo, same deal. Disclaimers all over the place.
This would be tedious for me and a continual eye sore for readers. But rules is rules.
To cover my hind parts and preserve your reading experience, please assume that, for every recommendation, link, and product I use, the following all hold true:
Please feel free to use the text and images on this page with proper attribution. There is no reason why each blogger should have to reinvent the wheel.
Illustrations above courtesy of Louis Gray and Jeannine Schafer Most other images on this site (with the exception of a few I took or otherwise produced myself) are available in the stock photo library of BigStock.