The Federal Trade Commission requires that we disclose any relationship we have between a product manufacturer or service provider when we write about a product or service.
Here are the guidelines we operate under at FortyEightMinutes, LLC.:
- We are rarely paid to do a review. In almost all cases, we never accept money to review a product or service. We invest our own time to review and test products. We absorb the entire cost to record and post-produce all audio and/or videos we record about products. If we are ever paid to do a review, it will be clearly annotated at the end of the review.
- We typically don’t pay for the products we review. They are sent to us by the manufacturer. Rarely, do we request a product. In almost all cases, the manufacturer approaches us first via e-mail. If we feel it’s a product you might get benefit from, then we request they send us the product.
- We normally don’t return the products after testing them. In certain cases, the product is loaned out to us for a set amount of time, and it is returned to the manufacturer at the end of the testing period.
- If we create a link to a product in a review, sometimes we may get paid a commission if you purchase the product or service. These links are included after posts are written, and posts are never composed for the purpose of including advertising.
- No advertiser will ever influence the content, topics or posts made in this blog.
These are good rules and practices in today’s digital world. It’s important for you as a consumer to understand the relationship between the person reviewing the product and the manufacturer or service provider.
If you don’t see a disclosure policy on a blog, that reviewer may be violating the law or at the very least the Code of Ethics.