An update on my ethics and how this blog runs…

A semi-serious blog entry as there’s been a bit bounding around about referral fees and affiliates and as such on various other blogs, and how it affects the quality of the blog information (i.e. a blog entry turning into an advert for a product).

I’ve been watching this very carefully and how others are handling the situation, and thought it is best that I state my position on the matter.

I have updated my Links, Ethics and Legal notes page (which is reviewed at least every 2 months), which contain the main messages to these changes:

Funding
Links may contain content that have been linked to advertisers. GhettoIFE.com cannot take responsibility for the offers listed or given by our advertisers.

Referral links may be offered to you that may offer some compensation to either this site, our affiliates or to the visitors. These will be kept to an absolute minimum and will be listed appropriately. Your consideration of using these links is appreciated if they are offered.

GhettoIFE.com does not provide nor receive commercial endorsements unless specifically stated in a post.

Reviews and Opinions
Any reviews are the opinion of the author only and reflect what the author saw at time.

Opinions are based on the authors thoughts and not through commercial incentives.  Should a commercial incentive be a factor, it will be declared within the report.  Additionally, commercial gifts will be declared to the blog if it is deemed by the author that it may impact the reading of your report.

In addition, I’d like to draw your attention to the following specific types of products and how they will be handled:

• Credit Card Spamming – is off the the table.  Most of you have been inundated with Chase’s Sapphire Card as being the best piece of plastic on on the planet. As the blogger is in the UK,

1. I’m only going to show UK credit cards when deals
2. Cover them if they are are updated, appropriate and of reasonable value, and importantly
3. No affiliate links will be made available – only direct links to the product in question.

• Groupon Deals – are on the table if they’re are interesting and relevant to the subject (and if I’m blunt, these are becoming rarer by the day).   You won’t see these otherwise from me.
• Quidco/TopCashaback (etc) affiliate link – If there is a good deal via Quidco, I’ll point you in that direction. If you haven’t signed up to Quidco, an affiliate link will be provided, with a 50/50 split on a new member joining. This I suspect will be equally rare.

I still intend GhettoIFE to be still as independent and sarcastic as ever (even after the move to BoardingArea), and to hold both airlines, governments to account where needed, to handle news that comes in a balanced format, and my reviews and trips covered in  own unique manner. Similarity, I will continue to focus on the content of this blog, honing in on UK and Europe Coverage as a default, with interesting World coverage.

By removing the temptation of affiliates and such, I feel can look after my writing better. Heck, I might actually use the spell checker every now and again.

Whilst I have no issues how others choose to run their blogs, I hope this clarifies my personal position on how this blog operates.

If you have any questions about these minimal changes (and in-fact the most I did was bold a couple of things, tidy up the spelling in a couple of paragraphs), please feel free to email me at blog@ghettoife.com or use the comments box.

For those remotely interested, I can list what gifts I have received by writing this blog (other than your comments):

• 1 Polo Shirt (large)
• 1 T-Shirt (large)
• 4 Pens
• 1 box of business cards

And yes – that’s it so far…

Thank you for reading 🙂