I suppose I need to write something here as I am linking through to this page so much. This is a commercial blog, and I am going to use affiliate links, without (aff) after them. Most of the time I will have other explicit disclosure (and bonuses for using my link).
Affiliate Disclosure
I don’t use other people’s materials when writing about products that I think would be useful for my readers, and most of the time the products I mention I own and use on a daily basis. Regular readers will notice a trend in my writing.
The majority of the products I support I mention multiple times, not just when I first hear about them, but one month, six months, even one year down the line I am still writing about them.
Occasionally I will mention other products that are shorter term. Quite often they will be highly topical with a lot of people talking about them. I will only mention them if I can add something to the conversation about them.
There are products I have purchased that I have never mentioned on my blog. It wasn’t due to the quality of the products, but because I didn’t feel I could add anything to the discussion.
There are also products I haven’t purchased that I have mentioned, even with affiliate links. This was because I could add something to the conversation about the product, a different perspective that my readers would be interested in.
Paid Reviews & Links
All paid reviews are fully disclosed within the content.
If someone asks me to do a paid review, I would only write about it if it was relevant. Whether I was paid for it or not would be a secondary motivation, but who doesn’t appreciate some compensation for spending hours reviewing a product, even if it is only a token gesture.
The financial motivation will never influence my opinion on something, whatever the monetization model. It has cost me a fortune in potential earnings in the past, but that is just the way I am.
Display Advertising
I personally inspect all display advertisers for suitability, but at the same time I treat display advertising as an arms-length transaction, and it should not be looked on as an endorsement.