The Federal Trade Commission requires that I disclose any relationship I have between a product manufacturer or service provider when I write about a product or service.
There are some basic guidelines which I operate under at Skindustrial and in Life in general.
I rarely… if ever paid to do a review. In almost all cases, I never accept money to review a product or service. I invest my own time and quite often money to review and test products. I absorb the entire cost to produce all content I make about products or services. If I am ever paid to do a review, I will make this clear in or around the review.
I usually have to pay for the products I test, however I welcome freebies 😉
Should a manufacturer approach and IF I feel it’s a product, I might ordinarily buy or I feel you might get benefit from, then I will accept the product, test and review the product.
I won’t return the products after I test them. In certain cases, the product is used up or destroyed. In other cases, the product may get damaged during the testing. I don’t have the staff or the resources to process the return of the products.
If I create a link to a product in a review, sometimes I may get paid a commission if you purchase the product or service.
If you click a link from one of my columns or newsletters and it delivers you to a website selling that product (e.g. Amazon.com, etc.), I may get a small commission from that website should you buy.
These are good rules and practices in today’s digital world. It’s important for you as a consumer to understand the relationship between a person reviewing the product/service and the manufacturer or service provider. If you don’t see a disclosure policy as part of a review of a product, that reviewer may be violating the law or at the very least the Code of Ethics.
If you want to read more about affiliate programs and the rules, you can visit this site (which is operated by MoreNiche) for more information or this site (which is operated by the UK government).
Based on the very good AskThebuilder’s Disclosure