This disclosure policy is being updated as my blogs make the transition back to my website. The permanent disclosure policy can be found at Phantascene.com/disclosurepolicy.html
Thank you,
Sandra
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Regular readers know that I am very open about the fact that, while I may not disclose exactly what posts have and have not earned me something, I earn money through my work as a blogger. This is, in effect, my job. My real job is the highest stress unpaid job in the world - family caregiver, but blogging is how I make my money.
I am, and always have been, all for my readers knowing exactly what I am up to and why I may select not to disclose every post that I have been paid for. I trust in the fact that my readership, some of whom I talk to through messaging programs, are all very intelligent and individualistic people that can determine what they desire to find out more about based on their own good judgment. I present things that I feel my readers might have an interest in, and I present it in manners that explain why I felt that they might have an interest in it. I try (and possibly fail) to write in an interesting manner that will allow the reader to feel both comfortable reading and confident in their understanding of what it is that I had talked about.
My blogs are growing as a result of increased content and inbound links. As a result, I am faced with a growth in readership. My readership for my primary blog has gone from a core of 3 to 5 readers (6 unique visitors in 98 sessions) in September, to 26 unique visitors in 354 sessions for the month of October. This requires a level of disclosure on my blogging policies that had been unnecessary when I knew all of my readers personally.
I want to be certain that my new readership fully understands what it is that I am doing and why, so I have joined with many other bloggers in adopting a Disclosure Policy. I hope that we might shape the future of online communication and information exchange to a point where people are not trusted simply based on the fact that they appear to be sincere, but rather on the fact that they adhere to their ethics and prove to their readership that they are objective. A level of trust in which readers can identify those bloggers who care so deeply about their subject and that they are able to provide in-context advertisements that are of genuine interest to their readership. Bloggers who will not allow anyone, for any reason, to dictate what they can and can not do with their blog or website.
As long as a person remains within the laws of their government, respects the right of privacy of others, and does not act against the nature of common human decency, then I think that they deserve the right to control the content of their blog or website - including rather or not that content is paid for by sponsors and/or advertisers.
If you think that bloggers should be open about their content, including possible influences to the subject matter presented, then you should consider adopting a Disclosure Policy, or encourage your favorite bloggers to adopt disclosure policies for their blogs.
One of the best definitions I found for a disclosure policy was by Fidelity on investing:
"Disclosure: Material information (eg management practices, financial statements and legal involvements, etc.) made public by an issuer as required by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The purpose is to put investors on notice of information pertinent to their making initial and continued investment decisions about the issuer."
I believe that this can easily be reworded for blogging:
"Disclosure: Material information (eg management practices, legal involvements, sponsorship, etc.) made public by a blogger. The purpose is to provide readers notice of information pertinent to their making initial and continued trust decisions about the blogger."
I intend to formulate a formal Disclosure Policy based on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission handbook: A Plain English Handbook: How to Create Clear SEC Disclosure Documents, but for now I am putting up the Disclosure Policy created by me at DisclosurePolicy.org so that all of my readers will know exactly what my disclosure policy is. I will also be providing easy to locate links to this on each of my blogs.
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This policy is valid from
31 October 2006
This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. For questions about this blog, please contact Sandra Fikes (sandra -at- phantascene -dot- com).
This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.
The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post may not always be identified as paid or sponsored content.
The owner(s) of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers' own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.
The owner(s) of this blog would like to disclose the following existing relationships. These are companies, organizations or individuals that may have a significant impact on the content of this blog. We blog about people to whom we are related. The most interesting such people are: My father - who, while serving in the United States Army, was given a commendation for his "significant contribution to" the "Application of Automatic Switching Systems, 1965-1970".
The owner(s) of this blog would like to disclose the following existing relationships. These are companies, organizations or individuals that may have a significant impact on the content of this blog. These are companies, or services that pay us to post content on our blogs: Google, PayPerPost, Blogative, Blogvertise, BloggingAds. Note that not all of the preceding companies, organizations or individuals may have influenced content of the blog on which this is posted or from which you linked here from. These are the companies that I have affiliation with for all of my blogs. I have tried to list them all, any accidental omission will be corrected as soon as it is noted.
To get your own policy, go to http://www.disclosurepolicy.org
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