Transparency is important. This page explains how MoneyCortex operates and how it’s revenue sources gives the website a chance to reach it’s full potential and provide you with the best information possible.
Explanation Of This Disclosure
The FTC in America, and ASA in the UK require all bloggers to disclose their practices around things like sweepstakes, online reviews, receiving free products/services, affiliate links, and endorsements. This page is here to meet those rules and bring transparency of how MoneyCortex operates. It can be a bit of a jigsaw for your brain to work it all out but hopefully it makes sense!
Here you’ll also find explanations of how the different aspects work, not only on this website, but across the web. Unfortunately lots of other websites choose not to explain these things, but hopefully this page can help you understand things better.
Types Of Content Links
- Editorial Links – Links that have been placed in content or shared on social media or in videos that are purely editorial. MoneyCortex isn’t responsible for other peoples content.
- Affiliate Links – When you click on some links MoneyCortex may get a small percentage commission as a result of actions you take on that website. It doesn’t cost you anything extra.
- Sponsors – Sometimes companies wish to spread the word about their product or service. In this case they pay to collaborate on an article for the website. It will always be marked in the post as sponsored.
- Freebies – From time to time companies may supply access to products or services for free in return for an honest review. When this happens it will be mentioned in the content so you’re aware it was a freebie.
- Guest links – It’s rare on this website, but you may see guest posts from people in other corners of the blogosphere. This can help add strength in depth to the content and bring knowledge in from elsewhere, which is great!
Examples Of Different Links – As you’ll see above there’s a couple of different link types. “Editorial” and “affiliate”. When you click on them it makes no difference in terms of your destination. If the link is to a product or service it also makes no difference to the price you pay. Let’s do a demonstration. Below are two links to a book on Amazon. Click each one and see if you can tell the difference.
Could you tell which one was the affiliate link? As you have now seen, there’s no difference to you. Your experience is the same. The only difference is, if you carried on and purchased the book then one link would give this website a commission, the other wouldn’t. (Link 2 is the affiliate link by the way!)
As an example of a page that contains quite a few affiliate links, as well as lots of normal links, check out this list of survey websites ordered by minimum payout.
Why Affiliate Links Are Good And Bad
Affiliate links are the ideal revenue generator for websites like this because they mean less need to cover webpages with huge amounts of ads like you see on most newspaper websites and many content based websites. That improves your experience on-site, while also not damaging your experience on external websites. From that perspective they are perfect.
However, you need to be aware of the dark side of affiliate links too. It can cause bias. If a blogger is reviewing another website and going to receive a commission in return for you clicking and joining it, then some writers may potentially omit negative things or exaggerate positives in the hope you’re more likely to click and join.
Affiliation may also sway some bloggers across the web to recommend certain services ahead of others. You see that in the personal finance niche with articles about Swagbucks outweighing the number of articles about other similar sites. That’s because if you click through that writers link and join they will get 10% commission for life. Lots of bloggers also do articles telling you how to setup your own website. You’ll often see them link only to Bluehost. This is because Bluehost pay high commissions. Even though lots of bloggers won’t tell you they actually host with a different company. Swagbucks and Bluehost are well-established and respectable businesses (read our Swagbucks data driven review). But hopefully you can see how affiliate programs would lead them to get more coverage compared to others.
That’s just two examples of how affiliation can impact things. They show it’s far from perfect. But no online content business model is perfect. The native advertising led model is conflicted too. It’s a key reason the web has became infected with clickbait. Creators get stuck in a loop. They have to get traffic in order for the advertising revenue to be generated, and clickbait does succeed in getting people to click on articles and get the pageviews up, therefore they start resorting to clickbait titles to cover costs and boost revenue. The other option is a subscription model where people who want access to content pay a monthly fee. But putting things behind a paywall heavily restricts the audience and is a very challenging model which is why we don’t see it a lot.
How Everything Is Balanced At MoneyCortex
Hopefully you’ve read all of the above content explaining everything and not skipped any of it to get to this point. This section explains how this site is focused on balancing revenue streams and activities out to give the best possible user experience and give the website the best chance of being sustainable.
The main weapon to achieving this is with diversified revenue streams. This includes displaying ads powered by Google Adsense. As well as providing services such as user testing. Advanced courses and books are also being developed. With such a depth of revenue streams it means the focus can stay on the user and there isn’t a financial need to publish every sponsored post opportunity that comes along or join every affiliate program in the universe.
Here are other rules in place:
- The number of sponsored posts is kept low, the ratio can’t exceed 1:15, meaning for every 1 sponsored post there should be at least 15 regular posts.
- Using real-world service tests, screenshots, and showing pros and cons when using affiliate links.
- Requiring all companies who supply freebies to allow a completely honest review including constructive criticism.
- Only the absolute best guest posts will be published.
Hopefully the way this website is structured and the transparency of practices shows you how much care goes into this business. This disclosure applies to all content created by MoneyCortex. Not just blog posts but also podcast episodes, slideshows, videos, and any other content format.
Learn More About This Website
If you’ve never read the About page for this website you’re welcome to read that too. It may help you learn even more about how things are done around here. If you like the articles and want to keep up with future new stuff that gets published there are lots of ways to Keep Up. The pursuit of reaching a personal finance paradise is a long road!
Thanks for reading this page. Any questions you have can be sent in from the Contact page.