When I first began sharing information on the Internet, I never dreamed it would turn into writing books, publishing newsletters, and writing newspaper columns.
Nobody was more surprised than I was!
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this over the past few months as our family has continued to see our income dwindle to the point of essentially being non-existent. Here are some random thoughts from my personal blog about this topic from December 2011: Re-evaluating Lots of Things
From the very beginning (and we’re talking 25+ years ago!), I’ve always felt strongly that I want my first priority to be to help people, and not just run a business. My heart’s desire has been to help people save money and learn to live within their means … and I found that I couldn’t in good conscience “sell” things to the very people I considered to be my friends just for the sake of making a buck. [That's pretty much why I could never work for one of those "sell-it-to-your-friends" companies that make their money from everyone bringing their friends into the business to sell more stuff to their friends ... ad nauseum. But I digress.] 
Consequently, because of my very strong opinions about selling stuff randomly just to make a buck, I’ve had a very firm policy about ads in my resources. To sum it up simply: Pretty much no ads are accepted.
Every once in awhile I’ll place an ad for someone or something I believe in but it’s a rare thing. In general, don’t even ask to advertise with me unless I know you personally. If I want to represent a particular product, I’ll choose it on my own and will even give positive reviews without monetary reward if the product warrants a good review. I generally refrain from giving negative reviews – “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”
I believe strongly that people don’t save money if they’re spending money … so even offering coupons and links to “deals” doesn’t feel right to me — especially if there are affiliate links involved (which is how most bloggers monetize their blogs).
The only time you’ll see “ads” from me or in my resources is when I really truly believe in the product and feel it’d be worth spending money for. But I’m not going to clutter up your email inbox or Facebook status feed with coupons for products you really don’t need to buy anyway.
Personally, I find that coupons, specials, and sales are a huge unneeded temptation for otherwise frugal folks (like me). ;-)
I do have one exception to this, however. But it’s still only for books and products I believe in whole-heartedly —
AMAZON AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER:
Throughout my various blogs, newsletters and Facebook pages, you’ll sometimes see links to Amazon.com for books and other resources. To try to supplement my family’s income, I’m an “Amazon Affiliate” which means if you click on one of my links and buy that product, a small portion of the sale (about 5 to 7%) will be sent to me from Amazon. It won’t effect the price you pay and won’t add to your bill in any way — it’s essentially Amazon’s way of thanking me for sending a customer to them.
To keep with a spirit of full disclosure, I made less than $50 per/month all of this past year from these links so it’s really not a gold . But honestly, every little bit helps right now.
If you’d like to help our family a little financially, anytime you enter Amazon through one of these links, it will keep track of anything you order for the next 24 hours and I’ll receive a small Affiliate payment from Amazon.
So if you’re going to be online shopping anyway, this is a simple way to help our family make it through this difficult time in our lives as we struggle to keep afloat as a single-parent family.
Thanks for listening (reading)! 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/ref=sv_b_3/simplepleasuresp/
