If you are not a blogger or a person who makes money online, you probably don’t know about the ruling the Federal Trade Commission made that affects the entire blogging community worldwide.
The FTC’s panel of 4 people ruled 4-0 that bloggers must completely disclose their relationships with their advertisers. It’s very vague, you can read their press release here or you can click here for the easy to read 81-page ruling.
The ruling goes on to state that the FTC will fine bloggers $11,000 per violation. So to stay in compliance with the 4 people on the FTC panel that made a ruling that affected a multi billion-dollar industry… Here is our disclosure.
We make money from our blog, website and forum. If we didn’t, there would be no reason for us to put so much hard work and energy into creating all of this content.
There you have it… that is our disclaimer. But, we’re going to take it one step further. We are going to be completely transparent with you. We are even listing some advertisers we haven’t promoted yet.
Below you will find a list of every advertiser we use and how much we make if you :
- Purchase or use their services through our website, blog or forum
- Use one of the services we used to build our website, blog or forum
- Click on the link through our website, blog or forum
If you click on one of the banner ads or links in our blog and purchase the product, we get paid as follows:
Website, Blog, Forum and other Marketing Services:
- SiteBuildIt who we use to build and host our website – $75
- TypePad who we use to build and host our blog – $30
- ActiveBoard who we use to build and host our forum – 80% of the 1st payment
- e-Junkie – $1 per month if you sign up to use them to sell your product.
- Ad.ly – (free get paid to Tweet program), 12% of what our referrals make… So if you get $1 per Tweet, we make $0.12 for you Tweeting that Tweet. Tweeting is sending a message through the micro-blog platform Twitter.
- Elance – If you do freelance writing, we recommend signing up with them because you can get hired for freelance writing jobs. We get paid up to $32 for you signing up and 1% of your revenue for 6 months.
- AWeber – Email marketing service, we get 20% of the monthly subscription per referral.
Products:
- Amazon – 4-15% of the purchase price. These are the links for different products we recommend. We don’t recommend anything we don’t own, use and like.
- Best Buy – .25% – 6% of the purchase price. The only thing we promote through Best Buy is MagicJack… We use MagicJack 4-5 hours a day Monday thru Friday talking on to people in the US; it’s the best thing since sliced bread.
- The Expat Cookbook… We created it, so we don’t need to disclose that we make money from it, but because we charge for it, advertise it and make money from it, it’s on the list. We make the sale price and 50% of what our affiliates sell The Expat Cookbook for.
- Ace Texas Holdem Secrets – 50% of sale price. An eBook written by a fellow expat that shares his system of how he makes his living playing poker online.
Expat Services:
- Multi National Underwriters – $10-$30 per Travel Insurance or Major Medical Insurance policy purchased.
- ExPat CFO – $100 for hiring them to do your taxes. I spent several years in the Tax Resolution industry helping people out of IRS trouble. I don’t give tax recommendations lightly. I had a conference call with Nick Hodges, the owner of Expat CFO and NCH Wealth Advisors to make sure he was on the up and up before signing up for his affiliate program. I can without hesitation give my full support to his organization.
- Earth Class Mail – $15.00 per sign up. We found them through International Living and it was hands down the best way to get our mail down here. Unlike it’s main competitor Miami Box, our shipments come directly to our front door.
- Strong VPN – Up to $30.00 per purchase. This is a Virtual Private Network; basically you get to use their IP addresses (along with all of their other users) in their network. So if you want to go to Hulu (which is a US only website) you can log into their network and get on one of their IP addresses in the US (which you’re sharing with other users). It’s great for what it is because it’s cheap, but it’s slow.
- SEO-Proxy – $0.50 per purchase. This gives you your very own exclusive IP address in the US that you don’t share with anyone. It’s super fast and you don’t get blocked from any site in the US. Use this discount code to get 5% off (dsc_0455654)… I use the $10 a month 1-proxy plan and I use it daily. I recommend it over Strong VPN.
Travel Services:
- Orbitz – $3-$30 per package booked through their site.
- Travelocity – 2-6% of the purchase price per package booked through their site.
- Lufthansa Airlines – 2% of the purchase price of an airline ticket through their site.
- Air France – 1% of the purchase price of an airline ticket through their site.
- Taca Airlines – $3 per airline ticket purchased through their site.
- Expedia – 2-5.5% of the purchase price per package booked through their site.
- LAN Airlines – 1.25% of the purchase price of an airline ticket through their site.
- Hotels.com – 5.5% per hotel booked through their site.
- Budget Rental Car – 3% of the purchase price of a car rented through their site.
Planned Future Services for 2010:
- We are going to have a paid area for people to post Real Estate For Sale and For Rent. We will make money from those people for advertising their properties.
- We are going to have a tourist attraction area that advertisers will pay to promote their tourist attractions. We will make money from those people for advertising their attractions.
- An eBook about having a baby in Uruguay from beginning to end of the process.
- An eBook of how exactly, step-by-step, of how to create a profitable web business. Here’s a little secret, Exploring Uruguay isn’t our only online business.
Additionally, when you click on the Google ads or Chitika ads on our website, blog or forum we make a few pennies per click, literally; it could be $0.01 to $0.11, sometimes more sometimes less, it’s all over the place… Per their policies, we can’t tell you to click on every Google and Chitika ad that pops up on the pages (wink wink).
So the great news is, our website, blog and forum are the places to start for your online shopping, expat services or travel needs.
If you have any questions about anything on this page, please ask in the comments below.
Shirley says
Fantastic! I really admire you for going above and beyond the call of duty, listing in detail your monetization sources. Congratulations on your success to date! May you continue making money by helping people out.
BrianJUY says
Thank you Shirley…
A lot of people know that blogs and websites make money, but they just don’t know how.
So to look at the FTC ruling in a positive light; we are showing people some of the different revenue streams that are possible if they were to create an eBusiness of their own…
Peace,
-B-
Diana Boles says
Great job! I’ve learned a lot reading your blogs.