There’s some useful information here, so I’m glad I found this post…. but your tone strikes me as kind of self-righteous. What’s up with that?

1.) Major companies who approach me will offer to send a sample. I ask for another one to be given away and then require that person who wins to review it HONESTLY. They send me a sample because I do several blog posts about it not just one. Such as a Health Master Juicer worth $200. I came up with a recipe contest. They had to post it and link back to the Health Master site. The company was excited about my creativity.

2.) I do reviews and product announcements without physically having the product which I will be doing one in the near future. Because of this the company want to send me a product in August. That is perfectly fine I think. As long as I am provided with a nicely detailed picture and information about the product I have no problem writing about it.

3.) I do offer to return the item and will be with the product called DEMY which is worth $300. I can understand it. Its a brand new item that is barely on the market.

4.) I have a giveaway going on right now with several etsy artists in it. I didn’t take the product for myself but I am giving it away. The person who wins will review the products honestly. AND I am paying for the shipping to the winner myself.

Am I unethical? Blanket statements are offensive. Nobody likes to be ripped off. Maybe I am different who knows. Momdot.com is very professional. But just like anything….you get a group together there are bound to be idiots in the crowd. Just like designers and clothesmakers want to be seen as individuals so do bloggers. We can’t let a few rotten apples ruin the whole barrel.

I think the challenge here is my use of the word “endorser.” An endorser is not the same as a reviewer. An endorser has an agreed (perhaps contractual) relationship to promote a marketer positively in exchange for goods, services or money. A reviewer has no such obligation. The distinction should be made clear.

I don’t need to read about whether Florence Fabricant did or did not get those Armani Chocolates for free before writing a glowing review of them in the New York Times. In fact, I hope she did try them first!

All you need to do is assume that your *readers* have half a brain. If you say “I was given a free a 25 mL sample bottle of shampoo to review,” that meets the requirement of disclosure and it also allows those of your readers with more than half a brain to determine whether they consider that amount of payment to be likely to influence your judgment.

Why would anyone have a problem with free and open disclosure of this type? For one thing, it circumvents sneaking suspicions that “I bet she was paid thousands of dollars for that glowing review.” It’s all to your advantage.

Not every blogger is akin to a journalist or an editor, nor do they want to be. I also find it hard to believe that a single product in many cases (think a travel size container of shampoo, a self-help book, a baby onesie) can reasonably be considered “compensation” for endorsement by anyone with half a brain. But then…there’s the CPSIA. So I suppose anything is possible.

I find it interesting that the author of the article left a comment like this untouched [redacted for brevity] And yet not only was there complaint about another that called the article itself ignorant being a direct attack, but it was actually edited. The comment quoted above is a pretty personal attack, but hey, it supports the author, so it’s ok? Editing a writer’s comment is one of the most offensive things I can think of someone doing. Our words are our product, our craft. How would you like it if someone took apart one of your pieces and put it back together the way they felt it should be? It’s not different, unless you are haughtily looking down from a pedestal you have put fashion designers on to the lower status that you deem writers to have.

To save yourself future embarrassment, you should probably assess more carefully before making such statements. None of your assertions are correct. If you’d spent any time here, you’d know I am a writer -not a fashion designer. Writing is how I make a living so accusing me of demeaning writers to favor designers diminishes your credibility (besides, any professional writer is very accustomed to being edited). Your other assessment, that of comments favorable to my position were left intact, is not logical because none of these were directed at any person directly. My policy is that comments that attack me are left intact altho I’ll usually edit out any curse words (page ranking). Personal attacks against other visitors are removed so my position is precisely the opposite of what you claim.

More importantly, the comment you mention wasn’t edited, the content was not re-arranged as you claim it was. Rather, the comment was shortened to include a link to her entry that she’d pasted here verbatim. Having duplicate content across the web on separate pages downgrades one’s page ranking. Google thinks it’s splog. So your criticisms notwithstanding, I did not edit her comment to favor myself as she’d written the material she pasted here well before I ever wrote my entry. Now, had she tailored her comment specific to the situation rather than wholesale copying, it would have remained intact. Furthermore, the entry as she copied and pasted it was quite lengthy; spanning several pages.

It’s an issue of professionalism and courtesy. When posting on other blogs with continuing thoughts, it’s best to include links to related content regardless of who has written it (just because you wrote it doesn’t mean you should post a three printed page comment when you should excerpt and link). It is not appropriate to post previous entries verbatim in the body of a comment unless it’s excerpted.

I’m not a review blogger, though I do post quick blurbs about things I stumble across that look cool or things I already use and love. But I do buy things, and I make pretty much every purchasing decision for my household and for the gifts I purchase. As do all of my friends, both in real life and my blogging friends. I don’t trust advertising alone to guide my decisions. What I want is a recommendation from someone whose opinion I trust. And how can they truly recommend the product other than a “how cute!” if they haven’t held it in their hands? How can they attest to the quality if not given the opportunity to see how it stands up to regular use? A little, “hey look at this” blurb may get me to check out the product, but before I buy it, I am going to Google it to look for reviews from people who actually use it. It would save me a step and ensure my interest does not wander to a competitor’s product if the review was right there as well.

I also think its important to think about this issue in terms of today’s economy. Most of the country is feeling the pinch, so other than those products that are really only of interest to the richest of the rich, most products are considered heavily before being purchased. If I need to get a wedding gown, for example, I want to make sure that the designer I choose has a reputation for creating the highest quality gown within my budget, in a style I love. A magazine ad can tell me about the style, and contacting the designer may get me the price information, but who is going to tell me if they beading stayed intact through the entire wedding, reception, and the dry cleaning afterward? Only a bride who actually *wore* the gown will be a credible source of that information to me.

The recommendation from PR firms who do recognize the buying power of the readership of mommyblogs is to have a PR notice on our sites. Why don’t you designers do the same thing? In your media kit have a statement about whether you do give our samples or not, if you expect them to be returned or given away, whether you accept particular sizing requests so the product can actually be tested, what are the minimum traffic requirements for a site to request samples, and so forth.

If you get anything out of this comment, please let it be this: I was a reader long before I became a blogger. A review that does not include physically using the product or service is not a review to me. It is an ad. And ads do not mean one tenth as much to me as a review does. My money is more valuable to me and my family than ever. I won’t spend it unless I can confirm that someone I trust -be it a blogger, a friend, a relative, a colleague- has confidence in the product, or unless dozens of people I don’t know publicly agree on the value, such as on epinions.com.

By not recognizing that the majority of consumers feel similarly-particularly when you are talking about online boutiques which tend to require customers comfortable with the internet, the person you are hurting the most is yourself.

I run one of the most popular blogs that moms read (not a mom blog). We’re not a review site but we prominently feature products as a service to our readers. Essentially, that’s what all review blogs are doing – performing a service – telling their readers about products they may not have heard about and giving them the scoop on whether it’s worth their money. By telling it like it is, our readers trust our opinions, buy what we recommend, and then return to our site and bring their friends. When they do that, we build our traffic and are able to sell advertising which is how we pay the bills, including paying our reviewers. Our revenue model has always been advertising, just like it is for review blogs – or at least they want it to be – just take a look at all of the affiliate and network ads littering the sidebars.

If their business model is truly pay-per-post (or in-kind via keeping the samples), they need to be transparent with their readers about that. Are they reviewing things positively in exchange for being able to keep the products? After all, if they write negatively about the product, that will certainly dry up the pipeline for other products from any manufacturer. But really, at the end of the day, there’s a reason there are so many review blogs right now. They realized that other women were able to get free stuff and they wanted in on it. That’s their revenue model. Free stuff. If you think you’re such a hot commodity, maybe sell subscriptions like Stroller Queen does. I’m not sure how that’s working out for her but at least she’s honest. I trust her opinion a heck of a lot more than someone who has nothing but wonderful things to say about a stroller because they want to keep it!

I’ve learned a lot of things as a blogger for the last five years and one of those is that you do not always need to see something in order to review it. My site’s policy is to request samples of products only when it is necessary to properly review the item. For example, strollers, high chairs, slings, toys, hair clips that claim to be the least slippy, etc. are products that we must try out in person. There are other categories that we don’t need to use that we don’t request like clothing, bibs and burps, etc. I regularly attend tradeshows and previews to check out products in person. I’d actually rather not receive product because they clutter my home and really, how many diaper bags could I possibly use in my lifetime? We actually donate a lot of product to charities because returning all of the product we receive could be a full-time job!

I understand that not everyone can attend tradeshows in their area so they should request hi-res images to examine closely and be willing to return product they really need to check out in person, provided the manufacturer pays for shipping. They can also write about the product and then follow up by requesting samples for an in-depth review. By being flexible and giving manufacturers a taste of what being featured on your blog may yield, they’ll be more willing to send and let you keep product in the future. Develop strong relationships with publicists: be pleasant to them, show their clients some love, don’t get greedy, and they’ll take care of you for years to come. If you can’t send them traffic or sales, maybe you need to focus on being better able to do that and less on getting them to let you keep stuff.