Disclosures

I thought a more complete explanation of the disclosures on Blot & Dot was in order.

Blot & Dot complies fully with the latest FTC Guidelines regarding disclosure, which means you’ll see disclosures on each post that has a relationship to disclose in any way, and all of those will be buttons to go back to this page.

Note that while I do have relationships with these companies, I try very hard to be as objective as possible and provide info that my readers expect to read on my site. My integrity is everything, and what would my site be if you couldn’t believe anything I wrote?

Please keep in mind that I’m a person, not a giant company. Blot & Dot does cost quite a bit of money to run, so for this reason I do get paid for certain things. They help pay for server space, emails to send out, etc.

Things to disclose:

PR SAMPLE, PRODUCT SENT FOR REVIEW

You will see this mentioned on a lot of posts. I try very hard to keep the samples away (I accept under 5% of offers to send me a sample of a product), but there are definitely items I want to review and can’t get on my own. A lot of these items are not available yet to the public, but some just are hard to find in my area.

Not everything that is sent to me gets reviewed. I find reviews that are negative just… not fun to read. And not at all fun to write. So, I mostly write about items I liked or loved. I will write about products I don’t like as much, though I rarely trash products, there are very few bad products out there these days. Instead, there are just products that are a bad fit. So, that moisturizer might not work for my combination skin, but would be a great option for someone with dry skin.

SPONSORED POST

There are posts on Blot & Dot that have been paid for by a company. I turn down most requests for sponsored content on my site, but if there’s a product or campaign that fits with things I’m interested in or would have featured anyways, then I will work with the company on a post on the site.

For these posts I will allow the brands to help direct content a bit. For example, they might want me to feature a tutorial rather than a product review, or they want to add information about a special coupon offer or contest at the end of the post. Sometimes they can make minor corrections to a post before it is published. I will allow them to correct grammar errors or factual errors if I have explained a product incorrectly.

I do not allow brands to make major changes to a post. I will not change my opinion on a product. I have withdrawn from sponsored posts due to my inability to portray a product in a positive light. Rather than go through the time and effort and then need to withdraw later, I only agree to sponsored posts with brands and products that I’m interested in and know that I’ll like.

AFFILIATE LINKS

I do work closely with other sites, and many posts have links directly to the products discussed. I receive a small percentage of sales if you purchase through that link. There’s no obligation to purchase through those links and you could certainly go and buy the same items without using my links. All posts with those links are clearly disclosed.

ADVERTISEMENTS

Note that Blot & Dot does run banner ads, but they do not influence content at all. I have an ad company which serves these ads to my site, I don’t have anything to do with them other than saying “ok” to the ads general location on my site. I have no direct contact with the advertisers, and I hope only family friendly ads are on my site!