We began As We Saw It in order to share our experiences as travelers and expats, as well as to encourage our readers to travel — and maybe even become expats themselves — if that’s their dream.
We enjoy travel. We love to stay in special hotels, try new foods, explore a place’s history and museums, experience its local culture and learn some of the language. To get more than a superficial view we are always looking for local help — advice from expats and natives — and sometimes they may ask for a mention in our blog in exchange.
On December 1, 2009, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission released guidelines governing endorsements and testimonials, basically requiring bloggers to disclose whenever there might be hidden interests or unspoken biases related to recommendations.
While it clearly applies to bloggers and celebrities, rarely do the same disclosures appear in newspapers or magazines. Be aware of this when you read them.
So here’s our required Disclosure Policy:
- The online relationships that we’ve developed with our readers are just as important as our offline ones: We consider you all friends. We wouldn’t consider lying to our friends (online or offline), or think about withholding important information. Trust is essential, as is keeping our self-respect.
- We do use affiliate links. Frankly, we work our butts off delivering value to our readers. You can thank us by buying through our links. We know about destinations, products and services that you’ll be interested in, but if we believe in a product enough to recommend it, we think it is only fair that the company should thank us for the referral by giving us a cut of their profit.
- If we ever receive compensation for providing any information, advice, or recommendations on As We Saw It, we will let you know.
- If we ever receive compensation for mentioning any company or product on our travel blog we will let you know.
- You can be assured that — whether or not we receive some benefit — anything we see or say will be covered exactly As We Saw It.
- And we won’t recommend a product or place that we didn’t like, just because it was free. Period.
If we’ve missed anything here or if you have any questions, please let us know.