I have no contracts with any brands (beyond my participation in brand outreaches, see below). I have no direct contracts with sponsors. I have an ad contract with BlogHer, and they run my ad network. I do not accept payment directly from any advertisers to run links on my site, to add their site to my blog roll or in any way feature their content on my site. All advertisements go through BlogHer, which saves me a lot of time and hassle. It also means I do not interact with advertisers at all and in fact do not even know who advertises on my site until I see the ads pop up. BlogHer (and Total Beauty as my previous ad network) has never put pressure on me to feature content from an advertiser on my site, and there are no stipulations in contracts that they can do so.
As of this post, I receive about 90 e-mails a day from Public Relations Agents. Some of these agents work at agencies, some are at the brands directly. Most of these e-mails go unanswered because I simply do not have enough hours in the day to do so. I do sometimes ask for a sample to review for the site, this is likely about 5-10% of all the e-mails that I received. The majority of the time I do not receive the product as you would buy it in the store, rather I receive a "professional sample." This sample is usually not in the same packaging and is much smaller, usually just enough for me to test for a short period for my review.
I believe that receiving free products does not skew the editorial content on my site. I usually will only write about the products that I liked (or loved), and on occasion I'll write about products that I'm not as crazy about if they are a big enough brand that readers are likely to be asking about them or buying them. I try to be fair to products and rarely will I really gush about a product or pan it. I try to offer reviews that describe the product and how it worked for me. If it didn't work for me then I'll offer suggestions about who it is better suited for.
Most of the time this is the button you will be seeing on reviews. I'm lucky that I am a well known site with a large readership. That means I have contacts at most brands and can ask for mini lab samples to review. Honestly, I usually don't seek out products to try out, I get the e-mail with the press release and say "I'd love to try out this new thing," and it arrives on my door step. Or, it just arrives and I had no clue it was coming.
There are still products that I'll buy, and in those cases you'll see this button. If I buy a product I'll try to hunt down more info about it on-line, but likely I saw the product and had to have it.
At this time I have a few formal relationships with companies.
• Total Beauty: TB has a blogger network that I once belonged to. I currently am featured on their website, which generates some traffic for me. In addition, I have never been pressured by TB to change content or feature certain brands. LOVE them!
• Beauty Ticket: I'm a member of the current bloggers panel over on this discount beauty site. I answer a beauty question every few months for the panel, which is then featured on the site. I get some traffic from this. I don't get paid by them or anything else.
• StriVectin: I'm a member of their Insiders panel. I've written about this in a few posts, but this means they send me products to review and I get to have a higher level of reader giveaways on my site than other bloggers (I get full sized products, they get smaller samples usually). I do not get paid by them, and they've asked me to write about their products honestly.
• Aveeno: Aveeno and Recyclebank have set up a partnership with bloggers. In this partnership, Aveeno will send me some products which I can chose to try out and review, or giveaway, or just... not? I guess? I did sign 2 agreements with them. 1 said they could use my likeness for a year (which they didn't ask for, so I'm not sure when they'll ask for my "likeness") and the 2nd said that I'll do the FTC disclosure and be honest in anything I say. I love when companies ask me to share my opinion with readers and to be honest. :D
• OPI Blogger Network: I'm part of their blogger network. This means I get press releases and can ask for samples when colors look pretty to me. Which is pretty often, I fully admit to being a big OPI fan!
