Disclosure

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

As many of you know, or may not know the FTC has recently started to regulate blogs and pretty much any site that provides endorsements, testimonials, or recommendations for financial gain (starting 12/1/2009).

Well that’s not a big deal for me, I’ve always disclosed our relationships, whether good or bad.  But for the sake of complying,  here’s omy disclosure:

I’m a big fan of dis­clo­sure. I believe in it.

I will always disclose our relationships, whether they are in the interest of financial gain or not.  It’s always been the right thing to do.  Period.

All testimonials are unsolicited and completely unedited.  I believe if you do a good job, you shouldn’t have to be shady

I deeply value my read­ers and sub­scribers, as much as they value me, my exper­tise, and my rec­om­men­da­tions. For this rea­son, I try to be as open and forth­right as possible.

While I will make every attempt to dis­close each time I make a rec­om­men­da­tion on this blog, some­times I can’t or I sim­ply for­get. So I’ve included an abbre­vi­ated form on the sidebar.

How­ever, in an effort to be as clear and can­did as pos­si­ble, I’d like to post a more com­plete ver­sion, which high­lights some of my rela­tion­ships, the ways I am com­pen­sated, as well as the results I some­times show­case on this blog.

Here they are…

• I occa­sion­ally make rec­om­men­da­tions on this blog, which include links to help­ful resources for which I get some kind of com­pen­sa­tion. I either get a com­mis­sion for each sale, or receive some form of remu­ner­a­tion, either finan­cially or in kind.
• How­ever, these rec­om­men­da­tions are based first and fore­most on their merit. I make them either because of their value, help­ful­ness, and qual­ity, or based on my direct or indi­rect knowl­edge of the author’s rep­u­ta­tion, track record, and level of exper­tise. No adver­tiser will ever influ­ence the con­tent on this blog.
• Some affil­i­ate links are added auto­mat­i­cally with the help of soft­ware, which linki­fies spe­cific key­words within the con­tent dynam­i­cally. Oth­ers are added after the post is writ­ten. In other words, most affil­i­ate links are added inci­den­tally or subsequently.
• Some links do not have any affil­i­a­tion or com­pen­sa­tion what­so­ever, but are included for the same rea­sons expressed above. In other words, I add them based on merit. If I find them help­ful and sus­pect that they may be of inter­est to my read­ers, I will include them, regard­less of com­pen­sa­tion or lack thereof.
• With­out ques­tion, most tes­ti­mo­ni­als on this blog high­light pos­i­tive and some­times extra­or­di­nary out­comes achieved under unique cir­cum­stances. Typ­i­cal results are exceed­ingly dif­fi­cult to pre­dict or mea­sure, as all mar­kets, busi­nesses, motives, and results are unique. Yours will be no exception.
• As with most train­ing pro­grams or infor­ma­tion prod­ucts, by their very nature all results are atyp­i­cal. Such pro­grams are not “one-??size-??fits-??all” solu­tions as they teach a wide vari­ety of sys­tems and strate­gies. There­fore, it is impos­si­ble for any­one to pre­dict how, or even if, you will use the infor­ma­tion pro­vided in your spe­cific business.
• As with every busi­ness ven­ture, there’s inher­ent risk. You even stand a chance to lose money. So please use dis­cre­tion when mak­ing a pur­chas­ing decision.
• All tes­ti­mo­ni­als and case stud­ies are col­lected from peo­ple who have had per­sonal expe­ri­ence with our prod­ucts or ser­vices, and they have each sub­mit­ted their kind words will­ingly, and with­out direct finan­cial pay­ment or compensation.
• In rare cases, such as with case stud­ies, some stu­dents have received sub­stan­tial dis­counts on our prod­ucts in exchange for their hon­est review.
• Some endorse­ments may not nec­es­sar­ily or directly reflect the spe­cific prod­ucts show­cased on this blog. Some have become friends or part­ners in var­i­ous ventures.
• In some cases, I may be an affil­i­ate. How­ever, I do not receive any direct finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion for mak­ing such endorse­ments, and I only pro­vide an hon­est review, whether as an affil­i­ate or not, if I feel the prod­uct has merit.

Taken from Michael Fortin and Maria Reyes McDavis