Dear reader,

Thank you for stopping by!

My goal at EasySimpleSmart.com is to provide helpful tips, tools and tutorials for those getting started online. I cover topics such as how to start a blog, building websites, time management, making money online, productivity, etc

The information you see on this site is free to readers & subscribers, but represents many, many hours of time and research for me. To compensate some of my time and efforts I participate in affiliate programs as well as Ad Sharing programs like AdSense. Both provide some income and allow me to devote time and energy to the growth of this site

As an Affiliate, you have my word, I will only promote products I personally use or can recommend without hesitation.

Integrity, gaining and keeping the trust of my readers is very important to me.

I created my site mostly using free resources and research on the Internet. I rarely purchased services and tools to make this happen and I promote through my posts, clever ways to do that for free. I think it is important for new bloggers to NOT spend a lot of money until they are convinced that this is a fun and lucrative activity for them. Therefore the products that I do promote are products, tools and services that I truly believe are necessary or that would take your site forward much faster than a free method would.

What is an affiliate link / referral link?
Throughout this site you will see references to my use of affiliate links or referral links. These references are called disclosures and are a requirement as put forth by the FTC.

They are there to inform you I have a relationship with a particular product or service and if you choose to purchase that product or service via my affiliate link, I will get a small commission. Of course, this is at no extra cost to you, but it does help keep my site running and it is a form of validation that the information I provide is useful and provides value to you, the reader.

I truly appreciate your support in this way. Thank you.

Additional legal stuff just to make sure things are covered
This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog may accept forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.

The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post may not always be identified as paid or sponsored content.

The owner of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, I always give my honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.

This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Where we send your data

Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

Thanks again,

Paul