Disclosure of financial interests (update 12/31/09)

I'm not trying to make a living writing Life User, much less become a millionaire at it, but I am trying to graduate from university with a little less debt. This article will explain what I'm doing to that end, and how it may affect the content and presentation of the blog.

My potential sources of income include the following:

Google AdSense
Amazon Associates
Paid blogging

Google AdSense

Google AdSense ads appear above the top post, between posts on the main page and archive pages, and in the sidebar. They will be a mix, decided by Google, of cost-per-impression (CPM) and cost-per-click (CPC) ads.

Amazon Associates

So far, the only affiliate links I run are from Amazon.com. Unlike AdSense ads, affiliate links are cost-per-action (CPA), meaning Amazon only pays me if you actually make a purchase after clicking an ad (although the purchase need not be of an item advertised). They appear as text links or widgets in certain posts, pointing to specific products that I've manually chosen as relevant to the post.

Paid blogging

I may occasionally accept a payment or a merchandise incentive to write a post about a particular topic. If I do, this post will have the label "sponsored."

No matter how much I am being paid, the sponsor will not be able to require that a review be favourable. If a sponsor rejects a review because it is unfavourable, I will still publish it, but I will replace links to the sponsor with links to neutral secondary sources, if possible; failing that, I will add the rel="nofollow" attribute to links so that they do not count toward search engine rankings. I also won't review a CD I haven't heard every single song from, a non-reference book I haven't read cover-to-cover, or any other product I haven't used (although I may discuss it without calling the discussion a review or passing judgement on any aspect of the product besides its general purpose and premise).

I will not make more than one sponsored post in a day.

For every US$10 in AdSense revenue which Life User earns, starting on January 1, 2010, I will commit to making one unsponsored post before I make another sponsored post, if I haven't already made at least four unsponsored posts in the past 30 days. An unsponsored post will only count if it contains at least 200 words of original content that is not purely about the blog itself.

Conclusion

I hope this makes it clear that I'm trying to make money off this blog in an ethical way, without letting it turn into one big ad. I want you to be satisfied with this blog so that you'll become a loyal reader, and I don't want this blog to attract only shallow consumerists that it has no hope of changing. I'm not writing just for advertisers, I'm also writing for you.