Ethics and Transparency
When anyone gives an opinion in something such as a product review, you should always assess if you can trust the person who has written it. Could they have some kind of ulterior motive? Are they giving their honest opinion or are they just angling for cash? I strive to be completely transparent about my review process so you can decide for yourself if I’m worthy of your trust or whether there are things I can do to improve.
Do You Accept Payment for Reviews?
I will never accept payment for the reviews I post on my blog and have never done so in the past either. I feel that this would introduce a high level of untrustworthiness as my readers may think that I am giving good reviews to keep the cash rolling in, and it could also result in subconscious bias no matter how impartial I think I am staying.
I do ask companies to allow me to keep any products I review – there are two reasons for this. Firstly, I review products from all around the world, and posting them back would be costly. There would also be a chance of an expensive item being lost in transit or damaged on the way back, and I would be hard pressed to compensate the company for any mistakes on the part of the shipping company. Secondly, I make no financial gains from this blog except through donations to my Buy Me A Coffee page (these donations are put towards the monthly cost of keeping this blog running as I have to pay hosting and domain fees through Krystal). I enjoy the quality products that I review, and while I publish this blog to give what I hope is impartial and useful information for free to anyone who reads KraftyCats’ articles, I also get to fuel my love of stationery. I genuinely love what I do and happily spend hours every day writing both about and with products I review! I did attempt to host one giveaway about a year and a half ago, but the logistics went a bit sideways on that as I was still a very new blogger… I hope to have more success in the future so I can share good products with my readers too.
Bear in mind that while I do get to keep products, I am allowed to even if the review is negative. I am under no obligation to give a positive review, and if a company attempts to nudge me in that direction, I refuse to take the item. I’m not interested in posting a glowing review about a bad product – it benefits nobody but the company and misleads potential customers. If a company wants a nice review from me, they need to produce a quality product.
If I create a review for a magazine (for example, Pen World, who I wrote for in 2022), I may receive payment, but this is from the magazine and not from the company who has provided the product. Where I am paid for a magazine article, it is for my honest opinion and the time I invested in writing the article. It does not matter if this opinion is positive or negative, it just needs to be honest.
Do Companies Approach You With Products?
Typically, I approach companies who look like they’d be a good fit for the blog and ask if there is a relevant product they would like me to review. I do this as I am still building the popularity of KraftyCats, and companies may not have heard of me before which means that I have to seek them out instead of the other way around. I particularly like to work with lesser-known makers such as those on Etsy, but I review for all different types of business. I seek out products I think my readership will be interested in – this ranges from pens to miscellaneous desk items and anything else that I think you might like to see.
I also make it clear in my review pitches that I will not accept payment for my work, and that due to the reasons listed in the previous section I keep the products afterwards. I feel that it’s just as important to be transparent with any brands or makers that I am working with as it is to be transparent with readers.
Bias
I do everything possible to avoid bias. This ranges from practices I’ve mentioned above, such as not accepting payment for reviews, to avoiding reading reviews written by other bloggers before I review a product myself. If I were to read reviews beforehand I might become subconsciously biased one way or another, so I avoid it as much as possible. Of course, I do frequent stationery blogs, so I’ll might have read a few articles about a particular pen or ink before, for example – I just don’t make an effort to read these before I write my own!
My reviews offer an objective look at a product, but personal preference does come into things such as pen sections. If a particular pen is uncomfortable to me I will mention it, but I also make the way I hold the pen clear, so if you have a similar grip you are aware that a pen might not work for you. I don’t label a pen as ‘bad’ just because it isn’t comfortable for me – I describe my experience then allow you to judge for yourself whether you should avoid a particular writing utensil. This is different to a design flaw, which would be a feature which would make it uncomfortable for anyone to use.
Are There Any Ads or Affiliate Links at KraftyCats?
I said in the previous version of KraftyCats that I’d never plaster my website with random, annoying blocks of advertising and I stuck to that! I completely understand why blogs do it – it helps with covering the hosting costs of the website. Perhaps, I’d explore this avenue out of necessity if KraftyCats was in real danger of having to be shut down and my readers didn’t want to see it go, but even then I’d find the least invasive advertisements I could. Luckily, I don’t see any reason why it would come to this right now. I have enough storage on my current plan and don’t see myself having to upgrade it in the next few years.
As for affiliate links, I don’t have any of these anywhere on my website at the moment. This doesn’t mean I’m opposed to them, and I might include affiliate links to products I have reviewed and endorse sometime in the future. I can promise that you won’t see any links to products I wouldn’t happily buy myself, and any affiliate links would be clearly marked as such and would come at no extra cost to those who use them.
Disclaimers
You’ll find these at the end of my reviews, or any other articles where there might be any ethical dilemmas of any kind. Typically, these disclaimers will be a very, very condensed version of this page, stating where I got the product from and that all opinions expressed are my own.
Further Enquiries
If there are any questions that I have not answered here, if you have any specific enquiries or want to let me know how I could do better, please email me at [email protected] and I will reply as soon as possible (usually well within 24 hours). Thank you for reading, and I hope this page has helped!