Disclosure Policy FixItHerself.com.
As of December 1, 2009. the Federal Trade Commission is requiring that I disclose any relationship I have between a product manufacturer or service provider when I write about a product or service.
Here are the guidelines I operate under at FixItHerself.com.
Commissions:
If there is a link in an article and it takes you to a product or service, rest assured that like is probably “monetized.” What that means is if you go to that site and buy the product I will most likely get a small commission from that sale. That’s how I pay for this site. Not all links are monetized, but to be safe, assume I make the commission. (Trust me, it’s not much, but it pays the bills for this site)
Reviews:
I will not give many reviews here on Fixitherself.com (I do most of my reviews on my other sites) but I will be using some of the tools the companies have supplied me to test so I will post this disclosure policy here as well.
I am never paid to do a review. I never accept money to review a product or service. I invest my own time to review products. I pay out of my own pocket the cost to produce and post these reviews on my sites.
I don’t pay for products I test. If I do test a product I will be upfront with you and explain how and where I got the product to test. I do pay for products I review for long term use.
I don’t return the products after I test them. Once I have done adequate testing I will donate them to a select few local charities.
Specifically tools are donated to charities that use the tools, not charities that resell items to make money. The company supplying the product is welcome to come and get it when I am done.
If I create a link to a product in a review, I sometimes get paid a commission if you purchase the product or service. In general I get commission from direct sales from companies like Sears, Northern Tool, Amazon, etc. and paid for traffic I send to eBay. In other cases I don’t get any compensations ……. the owners of the companies I know and have a long standing relationship with. For example, I’ve known Gary at Acrease Mowers for years and have spent hours and hours discussing his product. In another example, Eric of Peterson Computer Consulting (hire him) is my son-in-law. If you ever have question about this, ask me..
These are good rules and practices in today’s world.
I want you to be sure that you can trust me. That my opinions are my own. And they are based on my experience ……… not how much I am paid. It’s important for you as a consumer to understand the relationship between a person reviewing the product 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.
