This blog was created as an outlet to talk about, and hopefully enter into meaningful discussion with others, about the experiences of vaping. I’m not here to try and sell you a bunch of worthless crap or incite flame wars for the purpose of driving page views. With that in mind, here is my philosophy of things and how I intend to run this show.

Advertising
In an attempt to subsidize both the time invested in this site as well as my own e-cigarette habit, this site utilizes advertising banners, affiliate links, and automated advertising mechanisms such as Google’s AdSense.   I have made efforts to be selective in the affilate programs I have signed up for.  While I may not have personally purchased from every vendor, I avoided stores which appeared to be shady, or not offer some sort of value to my readers.  This primarily means avoiding sites that sell outrageously overpriced micro kits with outrageous claims of longevity and health benefits.

I use affiliate links within actual articles.  However, at no point will I interject affiliate links within an article that are not somehow relevant to the content.  Additionally, I will NOT write posts specifically crafted around such links.  I also will not alter my viewpoints when it may become necessary to be critical of the products or services in which I might have a potential profit interest.

In addition to explicitly added affiliate links, I also use a third-party service to optimize affiliate links.  This service will automatically convert regular links to affiliate links.  Links are selected based on that service’s own algorithms and is not controlled by me.

Most articles will contain a mix of both unsolicited links and referral links.   In some cases a referral link may go to a different vendor than the one from which the reviewed item was acquired (for example, in a review of a specific product exclusive to a certain vendor, I linked to another vendor when mentioning generic CE2 cartomizers and eGo batteries.)

Review Sources
I’m not the Wall Street Journal or Consumer Reports here.  I don’t exactly have a budget to purchase stuff to review.  Therefore, I will pretty much review whatever I happen to have available to me at the time.  Generally this means stuff I buy for my own use, however, it could also mean stuff friends loan to me, or things I’ve won in contests, or even items given to me by interested parties for promotional purposes.

In the event a company wants to give me a sample of something, I will take it with gratitude.  However, that doesn’t necessarily guarantee I will write anything about it, and most especially it doesn’t mean that I will give something a glowing review just because I got it for free.

I pride myself on providing even-handed overviews to my experience with a given product. Products will be regarded objectively for better or worse no matter their origin.  I try to write about as wide a range of products as possible.  There are a lot of different kids of e-Cigarettes out there, and I feel that no one is necessarily better than another by default, but rather different people prefer different things.

Comment Moderation
I allow comments on my posts without initial approval.  However, I reserve the right to remove posts pretty much with wild abandon.  I try to be cool about such things and won’t moderate you out of existence simply for disagreeing with me, but this isn’t speaker’s corner, if you’re acting like a jackass, I will pull your comments.  There are plenty of other places to enjoy your rights of free speech.  Spam and comments linking to sites that have no bearing on the conversation will be promptly tossed out.

Social Media and Other Promotional Tools
I do participate in social media outlets such as Twitter as well as message forums like ECF.  I may post links to articles to help promote this site.  However, I will not post any kind of advertising spam or affiliate links using these vehicles as it’s just tacky.

You’re Still Here?
You actually read this whole thing?  I’m impressed, good on ya!

(Last update: August 18, 2011)