Do you remember what happened in 2008? I’ll give you some refreshers.
- Barack Obama was elected president for the first time
- Beyonce & Jay-Z tied the knot
- Sex and the City: The Movie was released
- Hulu came onto the scene
- I became a makeup artist and started giving product recommendations on the reg
We’re three elections past 2008, Beyonce and Jay now have a trio of children, SATC came out with another movies plus a series reboot, Hulu has really gained traction, and me? Still giving product recommendations if not daily, at least weekly.
I’ve never been a secretive makeup artist. If I find something that works, I want to share it with my people (that’s you!). This blog is chockfull of reviews, tips and tricks to help you level up your beauty game. I’ve always linked to products I write about in my blog posts so you click on them and purchase, should you feel so inclined. I’ve never made a penny off of that, until now. Let me explain!
A really cool social media maven, @thebuzzingblonde (check her out!) told me about Shop My Shelf. It’s a website where beauty pros (and I think non-pro’s, but I’m on the pro site) can share the products they recommend and people can click on them to purchase. Shop My Shelf experts get a little kickback, if you will, for any purchase made through their “shelf.”
I was psyched to hear about Shop My Shelf because I love the idea of having all (or most, since not every line is part of it) of my recommended products in one place. Experts can make lists so people can browse by topic or product type. Organizing things into categories is easily one of my favorite things in life, so all of this spoke to me. I began building my shelf/shop last week and will continue to add to it as I find new product faves.
If you click on any of the products in my shop and buy them from there, I get a percentage of the sale. (Full disclosure: I also now have some products listed on my blog affiliate linked via Shop my Shelf as well.) If I’m being honest, at first, I felt a little weird about making any money this way. But then I thought about all the free advice I’ve given out for the last 14 years. I paid for an Esthetics education, passed my exams and got licensed and long ago surpassed the 10,000 hours some say you need to be an expert in a given field, so why should I feel bad about getting a cut of a sale?
To be clear, nothing would be different on your end if you decided to buy through my Shop My Shelf or via one of the links in my blog posts. On my Shop My Shelf page, when you click on the product, it brings you directly to the company’s website or an online store that’s selling the product, and you can purchase it from there, exactly as you would have if you had gone to that website yourself. If you click on it from an affiliate link in my blog, it does the same thing. If I didn’t tell you about the affiliate links in my blog, you wouldn’t know it was any different from clicking and being brought to a different website like it’s always been, but not disclosing that would be bad business.
If you buy a product from my Shop My Shelf or one of my affiliate blog links, there’s no impact on pricing, shipping or anything else. On your end, it’s exactly the same as if you were buying directly from the site.
If you don’t like the idea of a kickback to me, you can just Google the product, go to the site and buy it that way. I won’t know! If you do that, the money you pay will all go to that company or online store. If you go to my Shop My Shelf or buy through one my blog affiliate links, you’ll be helping a small business owner who has been happily giving out free beauty advice for 14 years. It’s not a guilt trip, boo. Just a fact!
Whether or not you buy through my Shop My Shelf or blog affiliate link, I want you to have great quality products. I’ll be doing a series of posts featuring the products from each category with info about who I recommend them for, why I recommend them, how to use them, etc. Because what good are product recommendations without that info?
In the meantime, you can take a little looksie here.
Have a beautiful day 🙂
A Pretty Addiction 
[…] not, give this a read first so you know what’s up. The head over to my shop so you can peruse all of the […]