Understanding the difference between gifting and paid partnership
Launch library · evergreen read
Gifting involves receiving a free product with no formal obligation to post about it, while a paid partnership involves a clear agreement, usually in writing, to deliver specific content in exchange for payment, and confusing the two can lead to genuine misunderstandings on both sides of the relationship, even when the results are not immediately visible.
Even with gifted product, disclosure is still generally expected if you choose to feature it, since audiences deserve to know a product arrived for free, regardless of whether any money changed hands as part of the arrangement itself, a small shift that adds up over a long career.
Set your own personal policy for gifted product early on, deciding in advance whether you will always post, sometimes post or rarely post about items received this way, so each individual decision does not have to be made completely from scratch every single time, which is truer the longer you keep at it.