Blogging and social media are all about relationships and community. Feeling Fit values our relationships with our readers, other bloggers, and social media followers. We also value our relationships with selected brands and companies. We respect our readers by disclosing any material or financial relationships the may in any way influence our editorial content.

Note on honesty and transparency — our writers do use nick names for our online profiles. We do this because it is important to us to maintain a certain boundary between out public online and private offline lives. However we do share our own real opinions and experiences.

We blog because we love to share information, reviews, tips and recipes with you. We review products because we love to try new things. However, we have to pay the bills. Blogging has certain expenses inherent and we cover those expenses with blog advertising, sponsored social media shares and sponsored blog content.

We strive for honesty with our readers and are FTC compliant. Here is out disclosure policy. Because we also hate legalese, we divided this policy into sections so you can skim it for sections of interest…

Disclosure Policy for Feeling Fit:

(This policy is valid from August 1, 2015)

Feeling Fit, Bit by Bit is a personal blog primarily written and edited by “Sam Sly” (aka “slysam”). For questions about this blog, please contact Sam at slysamblogs at gmail dot com. Sometimes, we do feature guest posts or reviews written by our review correspondents.

Feeling Fit Display Advertising Disclosure:

This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation for both display and affiliate advertising. Some of our advertising is banner rentals, some pay-per-click, some affiliate (commission on sale) and some pay per impression.

Feeling Fit participates in several affiliate advertising networks where we receive a commission on sales made after a reader follows a link from our blog and makes a purchase. We do this as it allows us to promote products we have tried or are personally interested in and that we believe will interest some of our readers.

If a product is sold through a retailer we affiliate with (such as amazon), we typically include affiliate links towards the end of the post followed by the graphic disclaimer. We post the following graphical disclosure before our affiliate links…

When the link appears after a review, be aware it did not affect the content. The review is our honest opinion and the affiliate link is for your convenience if you want to purchase the product. In many cases, such as Amazon, Feeling Fit receives a commission on any purchase you make after visiting Amazon via our affiliate link.

Amazon Affiliate Advertising Disclosure:

Feeling Fit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. (Amazon associate “slysam”).

We typically work with Amazon since it is such a large retailer that we can include affiliate links for many product we review without developing an advertiser/publisher relationship with specific companies.

About Our Display Advertising:

Display advertisements do not typically have a disclosure, but they are typically obviously ads and appear in our side bar, page footer or at the end of a post. Display advertisements also do not influence our editorial content.

Feeling Fit’s Product Review Disclosure:

Here is our graphical disclosure for reviews where we received a free or discounted product:

We frequently review products or services. Usually (not always) we received a complimentary item for testing and review.

The owner and contributors of this blog provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. We frequently receive a free item for review. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the individual reviewers.

We will only endorse products or services that we believe, based on our expertise, are worthy of such endorsement. When possible, we present the pros and cons for a product so you can make up your own mind. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider.

Feeling Fit’s Reader Giveaway Disclosure:

We frequently host reader giveaways that are sponsored by a company. Unless otherwise stated in the entry terms, we only submit the winner’s information to the sponsor. Feeling Fit is not responsible for prize fulfillment (unless otherwise stated), but will simply act as a liaison between the winner and the sponsor. The sponsor assumes all responsibility for prize fulfillment.

In most cases we received a free product and sometimes other compensation such a a giveaway fee from the sponsor to host a giveaway. This offsets the expense of maintaining Feeling Fit and some of the extra expenses that come from promoting and administering giveaways.

Feeling Fit’s Sponsored Content Disclosure:

Our editorial content is sometimes influenced by sponsorship. The influence is primarily the topic covered in a specific post and brand placement within the post. These posts are clearly marked. Much of the time the content is based on our actual opinions and experiences. The one exception may be informational posts based on our interpretation of product related information.

Almost always (see exception in the next paragraph), that content reflects the writer’s opinion. This content may include advertorials, sponsored giveaways, recipes, DIY tutorials, tips for product use, or “infomercial” type posts. Posts written by Sam or another Feeling Fit writer tend to be more informational than sales oriented, we do include a link to the product page and sometimes affiliate links.

If the post is written by a representative of the company, it will be labelled a sponsored guest post. We typically post sponsored guest posts when one of our affiliate companies is holding a sale or promotion that may interest some of our readers.

Feeling Fit abides by word of mouth marketing standards. We believe in honesty of relationship, opinion and identity. The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post will be clearly identified as paid or sponsored content.

Here are other examples of sponsored post disclosures. (Note sometimes with recipes and tutorials the compensation was product-only).

Credits:

The basic template and some of the language is generated by disclosurepolicy.org. To get your own policy, go to http://www.disclosurepolicy.org
Disclosure graffics by Sam created with Canva
The top image contains a stock photograph that Sam edited. Image source http://www.gratisography.com/#people: http://www.gratisography.com
Informational Source: Federal Trade Commission disclosure guidelines

Advertising, Sponsored Post & Review Disclosure Policy About Feeling Fit (The fine print)