As much as many bloggers would love to hide their head in the sand and act like the ASA and CPA laws concerning the kind of content influencers and online entrepreneurs can or cannot publish does not exist – it does  . . . .and it is the LAW in the UK. This morning I had an amazing conversation with Kat from Blogtacular and Gemma from Hello Gemma all about what the recent guidelines issued by  these ruling bodies  mean for the blogging community and how to implement them.

I also listened to Kat’s recent podcast where she interviewed Emma Smith; the Copy Advice Manager at the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) – cheeky link plug here – and it was incredible insightful.  They both broke down all the grey area using very simple dialogue and real world examples.

so I decided to make some changes.

From the 10th October 2018, I (aka Epiphannie A aka Annie) will mark all posts at the top of the post with labels ‘Affiliate Link’, ‘Gifted’, ‘Purchased’ or ‘Sponsored’. In the case of paid placement, the post title will clearly begin with “Sponsored” in accordance to UK ASA and CAP policy.

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To make things even clearer to current and future readers, I have added more in-depth descriptions of the common labels you will find on this website below:

Affiliate Link

I work in affiliates so know the ins-and-out of affiliate marketing like noone’s business and I like to do what I preach, so almost every outgoing link on this website that links to a retail website is an affiliate link.  I receive a small commission when a reader clicks on one of my links and purchases something. It does not add any cost to you as a customer and doesn’t impact your customer journey in any way.

I get paid between 0.5% to 15% depending on the retailer’s affiliate program, product type, campaign etc however if you return a product then I don’t get anything – #simples.

 

Purchased

As the majority of products featured on this website is an (un)healthy mix of products purchased by me for the sake of a review or given to me by other bloggers (because de-cluttering is a real issue in the beauty blogger community).

In order to make it super clear to my readers, I am going to include the words ‘Purchased’ right at the top of my posts to indicate products that I have bought myself or swapped with other bloggers (and FYI none of the bloggers I do swaps with work in PR).

 

Gifted

If I am lucky brands, retailers or their representatives (aka PR agencies, SEO agencies or Affiliate programs etc etc) will send across a product for my consideration.

Now when I say ‘consideration’, this basically means that the product has been posted to my house, posted to my office OR given to me in an event’s goodie bag. I am under NO PRESSURE to provide a review (positive or negative) or mention it on my social media channels. I make 110% of all decisions on how and when it is featured on my website.

 

Sponsored

Sponsored included any posts that I have been paid for. This includes sponsored giveaways, gift guides, product round-ups or anything of that note. I know this can be a bit muggy so I am going to take this one step further and give real-life examples.

In some instances, if I have modelled for a brand AND the terms of my contract does not include any social media/blog content creation but I have CHOSEN to blog about the product – I will mark it as ‘GIFTED’ e.g. Makeup Revolution Fast Base Foundation Campaign HOWEVER if I have been explicitly paid to talk about any product and I have a contract saying so, I will mark the post as ‘SPONSORED’  or ‘AD’ e.g. GOT2B Edge Control Campaign.

 

And that’s it folks.

If you have any questions or suggestions on how I can make my website more ASA and CAP compliant then please put it in the comments below and once again to check out Kat Molesworth x Blogtacular’s podcast on this topic as it was AMAZINGLY done.