Yes, this website generates money. There are affiliate and advertising relationships between the website and third-parties, which introduce potential financial conflicts of interests. In the spirit of full disclosure, these conflicts are highlighted and outlined below so that you can make a fully-informed decision as you’re reading the free content.
Conflicts of Interest
First, I make plenty of money at my regular job (remember I’m a full-time practicing corporate lawyer), so you don’t need to spend a lot of time worrying that I’m going to sell you out for $100. A lot of time has been spent on the website, including countless hours writing content, organizing the site and learning about site maintenance. My hourly rate from blog income is incredibly low.
“For-Profit” as opposed to “Non-Profit”
My primary goal with the website is to assist intelligent lawyers and other high-income professionals who have invested long hours in their careers achieve their financial goals (although, secretly this blog is about reducing your stress and anxiety overall). Many of these individuals did not receive financial training, nor have they adequately come up with a plan to achieve financial independence. However, my altruism motivates me only so far and I find that even a tiny profit provides additional motivation to work hard. Plus, there are some expenses involved in hosting a website including hosting fees, domain registration fees, and hiring others to do things I haven’t yet figured out how to do on my own. Placing ads allows me to not have to pay these costs out of pocket.
Free to the Reader
There is no subscription or charges for premium content. All the information contained in the website is completely free. I’d like to think that the value of this blog is far greater than the inconvenience of a few ads and affiliate referral codes.
How This Site Makes Money
This site has the potential to make money in several different ways: 1) Affiliate marketing programs; 2) Direct Advertisements or 3) Pay-Per-Click Advertisements (like Google Adsense). The site is compensated if you click on a link from this website and subsequently perform some type of action on the affiliate site, such as making a purchase or opening an account. The site then receives a percentage of the purchase price or a commission. All affiliate relationships have been thoroughly considered and involve only companies whose products I believe would be useful to my readers. So far these companies include various student loan refinancing companies, Amazon, certain investment platforms and other financial services companies but I expect to grow these relationships over time.
Hopefully this will assist you in evaluating my financial conflicts of interest. For now, profits from this website are quite low and likely will always be much less than what I make at my day job. From time to time, this website may publish guest posts by writers who may have their own financial conflicts of interest. Guest posts will be clearly identified. If you’re having trouble telling content apart from advertising, please contact me. Your privacy is also important. I will never sell or disclose your email address.
FTC Disclosure
Regardless of the above, the FTC requires bloggers to disclose whenever there could be hidden interests or unspoken biases related to recommendations.
I’m taking the generous offer of Tim Ferris to reproduce his disclosure:
Per the FTC rules, if I interview someone and they grab the bill for lunch, I would need to disclose this. Ditto if I use an Amazon link that gets me 8 cents instead of an Amazon link that gets me 0 cents. If someone gives me a comfy t-shirt with a logo and I wear it in a photo, same deal. Disclaimers all over the place. This would be tedious for me and even more tedious for readers. But rules is rules. To cover my ass and preserve your reading experience, please assume that, for every link and product I use, the following all hold true:
(Illustrations courtesy of Louis Gray and Jeannine Schafer)
General Terms and Conditions applicable to Use of a Web Site
Per FTC guidelines, this website may be compensated by companies mentioned through advertising, affiliate programs or otherwise. Any references to third party products, rates, or websites are subject to change without notice. Please do the appropriate research before participating in any third party offers.
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Effective as of May 1, 2016
