A Brief Note on Affiliate Links

This page was last updated October 2023.

Some of you may wonder how CorporetteMoms is monetized.

Obviously, we have banner ads running on the site. We also have “affiliate relationships” with different companies, which is something a lot of blogs do — it means we get a commission (generally 2-25%) if you buy something we’ve recommended or buy from a store we’ve recommended. We don’t always use affiliate links, and affiliate links are not a prerequisite for editorial inclusion, but at this point, we have an affiliate relationship with almost all of the larger, mass-market stores that are preferred both by us and the readers for online shopping purposes because a) they carry a wide range of sizes, b) have enough pieces in stock that items aren’t frequently sold out, and c) have favorable shipping and return policies.

(If you’re interested in smaller, independent boutiques, please check out this series of posts of workwear stores off the beaten path. Kat’s discussed her favorite stores for online shopping as a consumer in more detail as well.)

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Here’s some more detail on types of monetization available to us. Note that the only way for a brand or store to guarantee coverage on the blog is through a direct partnership such as a sponsored post or giveaway.

Sponsored posts are only accepted from brands, stores, and products that align with the editorial vision of this blog and its editors as well as with reader interest. A sponsored post means Corporette® was paid a flat fee for the writing of the post; it almost always means the brand had pre-approval of the post as well as the right to give editorial direction, whether it’s the designation of a certain line of clothing to focus on, or the inclusion of particular phrases (such as the description of a sale as “the sale of the season”), or other elements. A brief list of copy points are negotiated, and the rest of the post is written in the usual style of the blog. Sponsored posts may make an appearance once or twice a month, are always in addition to regular content (instead of replacing it), and are clearly marked in the headline of the post, as well as the first and last line of the post. Sponsored posts may or may not include affiliate links; Corporette® sometimes offers a discount on the fee for a sponsored post if affiliate links can be used.

Giveaways are almost always partnered, sponsored posts, as disclosed in each giveaway; these also must pass muster with the editorial vision of this site. This means Corporette® was paid a flat fee for the administration of the post; it almost always means the brand had pre-approval of the post as well as the right to give editorial direction. Note that brands are given the choice of how readers enter the giveaway contest; if contest entrance is via comment on Corporette®, note that, pursuant to The Corporette® Privacy Policy, brands are not given any back-end information on entry comments such as IP addresses or e-mail addresses.

Affiliate links, where available, are used to monetize otherwise uncompensated links to products, brands, and stores the editors recommend in the normal course of writing content for the blog.

Brands do not have pre-approval or any editorial input into which products are chosen for recommendation, but note that brands may occasionally offer incentives for certain product lines (20% commission on junior prom dresses, for example) which may influence editorial direction if the incentive fits with the editorial vision. Affiliate links also result in a ton of data — number of links clicked, products bought, commissions generated — and that data is generally interpreted as reader interest, and as such may influence editorial direction.

As with everything else, though, if a product, brand, or store does not fit with the editorial vision of this site, it will not be featured. If readers don’t click certain products or stores, we may feature them less often.

In more detail: As noted above, an affiliate link means that this site will get a cut of purchases made through affiliate links. For example, if we recommend a sweater and you click our link and then buy lipstick at the site, we will get a portion of the sale of lipstick, even if you do not buy the sweater. The potential to earn commission may stay open for an extended period of time (7-60 days, depending on the relationship); if products are returned within a certain window of time (14-60 days, usually) we may lose the commission.

Brands may decide to deactivate the relationship or incentivize it further, such as by raising commissions. One kind of incentive is offering a flat fee in exchange for a guaranteed number of affiliate links on the site for a certain time period; as of Feb. 2017 the only brand from which we have accepted that incentive is from Amazon.

(Some bigger bloggers negotiate all of these terms — commission, cookie duration, return window, guaranteed number of links per month — but as of Oct. 2023 we have no such negotiated relationships other than the one mentioned with Amazon.)

If coverage of a specific sale or product has done well in the past in terms of reader interest (as gauged by clicks and commissions) we may promote the same sale next year. For a mostly complete list of affiliate relationships, please check out The Corporette® Mall — if you want to help support the blog, please consider buying through those links.

Banner ads, aka CPM marketing: Note that for the most part, banner ads seen on the site are running on the CPM model, and are priced for every 1000 pageviews (CPM = “cost per mille.”) Note also that most banner ads are not purchased directly through CorporetteMoms but rather through ad networks like Mediavine, AdSense, or others.

While we can set broad rules — and we have, such as “no autoplay video or audio ads” and “no political ads” — we’ve noticed that a number of advertising companies seem to be ignoring them/blatantly lying to skirt those broad rules we’ve set. We make best efforts to remove offensive or inappropriate ads as soon as we can, but if you see an inappropriate ad it would be hugely appreciated if you could click the “report ad” button beneath the ad — if you don’t have that option or it isn’t working, please email us a screenshot.

The “report” feature is (as of Mar. 2018) administered by a third party called PubNation; here is their privacy policy if you care to read it.

Occasionally, Corporette® or CorporetteMoms may run a “house ad” to promote and direct readers to particular content on the site such as our Guide to Comfortable Shoes or a big Nordstrom sale; we will do our best to use brand colors and other methods to indicate that the ad source is Corporette® or CorporetteMoms.

Banner ads are also available through affiliate relationships, and Corporette® and CorporetteMoms may choose to run a banner ad that directs to an affiliate link, either as a placeholder for a direct sale ad or a “passback” ad, which is a way to prevent very low cost ads from running (i.e., anytime ad networks are offering less than $1 per thousand views for an ad, we can switch the ad to a banner ad with an affiliate link or a Corporette® or CorporetteMoms house ad.)

CPC marketing (“cost-per-click”). In previous years we may have used a ShopStyle link instead of an affiliate link because the company used to work on a “cost-per-click” model, meaning that for every click on the link, we would get a flat fee instead of a commission (which is only awarded in the event of a purchase). As of October 2023 we are no longer using any CPC links as far as we know.

Some other blogs may have banner ads that are also on the CPC model; for the most part we prefer our banner ads to be CPM.

Products received for review purposes: As per our Product Review Policy, we only write about products received for review if we love them. If we received that product from the brand or another source (such as a blogging conference giveaway), that relationship will be noted in the individual post.

Stock disclosures: Kat owns individual stock in Alphabet (aka Google), Apple, Meta Platforms, Amazon, Microsoft, Coca Cola, McDonald’s, and Kimberly Clark Corp. All other investments in companies are via mutual funds or index funds.

On social media, we will disclose a) a link that goes directly to a store site via an affiliate link, and b) a link that was part of a “sponsored” package. (Corporette® and CorporetteMoms may sell, and sponsoring partners may purchase, “social media promotion” ensuring the partner a certain number of Tweets, Pins, Instagram posts, or more.) A link that directs users to a Corporette® or CorporetteMoms page (whether it includes affiliate links or not) will not bear any special hashtag or other note.

Disclosure history:

In the very beginning of Corporette®, there were no FTC requirements requiring this disclosure, and when FTC guidelines went into place in 2009, they were very vague as to what was actually required of bloggers. We decided to adopt a brief notation to disclose to readers HOW MANY (and if any) affiliate links were included in every post with a brief notation: “L-3” if there were three such links, “L-0” if there were none, etc…. This notation was carried over to CorporetteMoms when it began in 2014. No one else on the planet used this designation, as far as we know, so we abandoned it in 2017, changing our affiliate disclosure to be more prominent. Posts and pages older than Feb. 2017 may still bear this designation.

As of October 2023, we’ve changed our affiliate disclosure to be at the top of every single post, and have hopefully removed previous affiliate disclosures from many previous posts. You still may see them on older posts, though, either in an “L-#” format or in simple words, usually above the first H2 in the piece or as close to the first affiliate link as possible.

Note that for any posts from 2014-2017, our L-# affiliate disclosures did NOT include any monetized affiliate links via Skimlinks, which converted links on the front end into affiliate links, of which we got a cut.

For a mostly complete list of affiliate relationships, please check out The Corporette Mall — if you want to help support the blog, please consider buying through those links.

As we update older posts with newer affiliate links we will work to update the affiliate disclosures on those pages as well.