Disclosure, as you know, is the act of making something obvious. A disclosure policy is basically a personal statement that acknowledges that you post sponsored content in exchange for compensation. The sponsored content you are disclosing may be links, paragraphs or entire blog entries, and the compensation may be money, gifts, products, or some other type of valuable item or service that you are given in exchange for producing and posting sponsored content.

It’s a good idea to have a disclosure policy, so that readers know where you stand in terms of sponsored content. By opting for full transparency with a disclosure policy, you will not only be showing respect for yourself and your standards, but for your readers as well.

You may be wondering how to write a disclosure policy. The good news is that there isn’t much to it. Here is a copy of jenn.nu’s disclosure policy:

jenn.nu is my personal domain, and all content contained on this domain has been written by me.

You should know that I sometimes accept payment in exchange for sponsored posts and sidebar links. I also receive various products and online services to review, but I am not compensated for these reviews, except with the products and services themselves. Also, unless I specifically say so, I do not endorse any products or services that I link to.

Although I do receive payment in exchange for sponsored posts and sidebar links, I do my best to be honest and unbiased with my opinions, and I carefully screen third party links before placing them on jenn.nu.

In most cases, sponsored posts will be categorized under Commercial Break, so you will be able to easily distinguish them from my own personal opinions and endorsements of products and services.

This disclosure policy has been in effect since January 30th, 2007.

Feel free to copy it and adapt it for your own use. You may also write something from scratch. Or, opt for the convenience of having a disclosure policy generated for you. DisclosurePolicy.org is one site that uses the type of blog you have, the type of content you post and some details about your blog and its author(s) to generate a customized disclosure policy. Here is a sample of such a policy (this is Blogging Girl’s disclosure policy, by the way):

This policy is valid from 30 December 2007

This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.

The compensation received will never influence the content, topics or posts made in this blog. All advertising is in the form of advertisements generated by a third party ad network.

I am compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though I receive compensation for posts or advertisements, I always give my honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.

This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.