Recently, the Federal Trade Commission released their new rules for Disclosure Compliance. These new rules are set in place to ensure that readers or viewers of web media (blogs, Youtube videos, etc) know if the blogger/presenter is sponsored, endorsed or partnered with a different company.
In blog terms, the readers need to know if the blogger is making money by sharing a link or product.
What are affiliate links?
Affiliate links are a type of tracking link. If you click through one of my affiliate links and purchase a product, I receive a small commission.
Each of your purchase through an affiliate link supports Empowered Sustenance at no additional cost to you. As a matter of fact, because I collaborate with the companies whom I recommend, you safe money because I can offer you coupon codes.
Affiliate links allow me to keep Empowered Sustenance running. There are many expenses associated with managing Empowered Sustenance. My newsletter fees, which allow me to email you recent posts, are upwards of $500 per month alone. On top of that are many other monthly technical fees, along with the expense of recipe testing.
In order to share content and recipes on Empowered Sustenance, I rely on your support to continue blogging.
Please know that I never, ever endorse a product or service that I would not purchase myself. Items/services I recommend are things with which I have personal experience and can recommend without reservation. No exceptions.
What about sponsored content?
If a post is sponsored by a company, I will disclose this clearly in the beginning of the post. Again, I will only discuss a product if I’ve had a wonderful personal experience with it.
Thank you for your support!
Thank you so much for your continued support of Empowered Sustenance. Even if you don’t purchase items through affiliate links, so many of you show support through your comments, Facebook messages and emails. Your kind words always brighten my day! I feel blessed to connect with you each day.
Thanks for the clarification. I have been aware of affiliate links for a long time, so this was not a surprise to me. In fact, I have appreciated that you have not overdone it on the affiliate link action on my facebook feed. I have considered dumping another paleo gal because she is constantly posting things like, “Have you tried this new gadget?” with an affiliate link. I get those one to three times a day. That’s spam as far as I’m concerned.
Thank you for the feedback! Yes, I do try not to overdo it with the Amazon links on Facebook… the product pushing can get really annoying.
Do you mind if I use your verbiage for the Amazon links on my site?
Hi Shanti, I’m not sure I know what you mean. If you want to use my explanation here for Amazon links, please use quotations around my words and link back to my site as the source 🙂
Sounds good!
Hi Lauren! I was wondering if I could use your explanations on my site as well? With a link back, of course 🙂
Yep!
Lauren, I do a lot of shopping on Amazon. I’m wondering if you know of a way to bookmark your “affiliate” link so you get a little bit from that shopping? I will never remember to come to your site first to click through 🙂
It’s so kind of you to ask! I put a button in my sidebar with my link to Amazon, so you can click through that link to the Amazon homepage and add that to your favorites or bookmarked list.
Hi Lauren! Do you get any commission if I add the product to my wishlist, and eventually end up buying it?
I was wondering about this too. I like to place “bulk” orders from time to time and add items from the blog to my Wishlist, then eventually move everything to my cart.
It’s not enough to put a disclosure below the post. The FTC guidelines explicitly require clear disclosure before the post or before any affiliate links.
Hello, Lauren!
I really enjoyed reading your explanation about affiliate disclosure and learned the value of using it for your readers knowledge.
Last night I saved your site to come back and read it properly and write thanks as a comment, so I am back to complete it.
Actually I am a new blogger, so I am learning these important things, which are the part of blogging and making money through affiliate links; like amazon or any other program like this.
So once again thanks for explaining it and good luck for your success at every step.
Jaswinder
Hello girl!! Thanks for sharing with us your journey. I just can’t get enough of all your posts, you’ve been an inspiration for me!!
I just have one question, I’m looking for a countertop water filter and found the SS Drinking Water Gravity Filter in the Radiant life catalog website, do you think is a good starting point?
Thanks in advance!!
Thanks for your kind words! I personally use a Berkey filter (which is a countertop filter) and I haven’t looked in to the one you mention. However, I know that the people at Radiant Life do thorough research and I trust all the products they select for their site 🙂
Hi Lauren 🙂 !
Do you know a good substitute for sour cream and yoghurt?