Anonymous asked: I notice you’ve put up some Amazon links that have your referral code embedded. I was a little bummed to catch this since you are typically transparent about making money from things. You should mention that you profit from it and will get a kickback from your readers purchasing these things.

And here’s what I answered:

You’re right. I’ve updated my shop page on both versions of my blog to disclose that.

I’m also going to write up my own version of these bylaws to be even clearer about what I get for free/what I’ll accept for the blog. But I 100% agree with Kath’s last point, and that is my guiding principle in accepting free stuff/making money off of blog stuff:

I believe firmly in keeping the integrity of my blog and would never compromise my beliefs and standards for the sake of a payment.

That’s why I ended my OpenSky shop. It was a cool idea, but it would have been a lot of work to get the products that I actually use into my OpenSky store, and I wasn’t comfortable with selling things just because they were sent to me for free. I’m doing the Amazon affiliate program because it’s stuff that I use/would be linking to anyway, so honestly, it’s cool if I can make a few extra bucks doing that.