Just what is a blogger?
What is this Happily Blended stuff all about?
Happily Blended is my personal online space where I get to rant, rave and spread my thoughts virtually. I claim to be no professional in any area of writing and this is truly a personal weblog, not a professional media outlet.
Personally I am a bit more shy if you meet me, but I do warm up quickly. Think of Happily Blended as the place to meet the girl that has known you for years, not the girl who you just met and talked to for an hour, after all it takes a couple of hours for me to warm up when I first meet someone!
As a blogger who certainly reviews products and offers giveaways to her readers I must tell you about the FTC cracking down on Mommy Bloggers all over the world, telling us we must be honest and disclose the fact that we do sometimes get money, free items and other compensation for some of our content within our site. I have always disclosed these facts in the footer section of my blog but now I have created one big page along with disclosures on each product review, giveaway or other sponsored post so that you, the loyal reader, doesn’t feel betrayed by the blogger in me.
Ok all joking aside … I am not a law breaker and so I will go along with these new guidelines and let you know that HappilyBlended.com:
- Does accept payment to share a deal, discount code, giveaway, press release or similar at times.
- WILL NOT accept payment to positively promote a product she doesn’t think is a great product.
- Does accept free product in exchange for an open and honest review.
- Does follow her high moral standards when accepting a paid or non paid opportunity.
- WILL NOT be paid to be quiet, push sales nor anything that is unethical to her family friendly morals.
- Does link to this disclosure policy within a blog post that may be sponsored by payment, product or similar.
- Does accept paid links within blog posts.
- Does have affiliations with numerous products and companies through Amazon, LinkShare, Logical Media and similar sites.
- DOES NOT disclose when said affiliate links are used and DOES include at least one affiliate link within every blog post.
Basically within every blog post at Happily Blended you will find some form of paid affiliate links or keyword sponsorship. The paid posts at Happily Blended that include a product review will always have a second disclosure clearly stating the post was sponsored, however, posts that are personal in nature and simply link to an outside website will not have an additional disclosure other than the normal link to my disclosure page found in my articles signature line.
So if you see a link within a post you can assume about 90% of the time I was paid for that link unless it’s to a friend’s website or a link to another article of my own, in that case I am simply linking to show my support to others in the blogosphere.
I accept pitches from PR firms, twitter friends, Etsy shops, big business, little business and everything in between. I enjoy being pitched, I enjoy taking on an opportunity to work with a variety of businesses. I also am not afraid to turn a pitch down if I am not comfortable with the product, if the product has no value to my readers or family, and if the person who pitches me sounds like some spam artist.
Happily Blended will continue to be a mix of everything because that is who Happily Blended is … I am not classified as “just a girl” or “just a Mom”, I am so much more and so why shouldn’t my personal blog space be that too?
What can you expect from Happily Blended? I can answer that with my core values:
- Honesty
- Integrity
- Compassion
- Creativity
