Motivating Mum UK

To My Readers

Motivating Mum is a website which aims to offer support and advice to mums at all stages of their business – from planning, setting up to running the business – and also fitting in the mum and family stuff and some time for yourself along the way.

I hope that this blog will reflect all the different hats that mums (including me) wear. I hope to inspire you, to offer hints and tips in various areas, and also to provide a little light entertainment and glimpses of my own, complicated businessmum lifestyle.  This is unlikely to be an award-winning blog – it sits alongside my successful mums networking business, and reflects a little bit of my life, your lives and all sorts of other bits and pieces that come my way.

I will be featuring regular blogs from the Motivating Mum franchisees, and regular guest blogs from other businessmums – if you have anything informative, entertaining and relevant to share with our readers then please get in touch with me.

It is my intention that Motivating Mum will always be a free website for mums to use and I plan never to charge mums for the information that I offer.  However, this is a business, and so in order to make the site free to users, I will be accepting a certain amount of advertising on the Website and the Blog.  

There will be Sponsored Posts on the site, paid for by external companies, but I will clearly label these as such.  I will also do reviews of things that my children are likely to use or enjoy, mainly films, games and activities.  I consider this a perk of the job for my children – to compensate them for the time when I am working and not there for them.

I will always disclose that I have received a product or service for free and the reveiw will always be honest – with both positive and negative points mentioned where appropriate.

The blog is a fine line between the needs of you, the readers, and the needs of the companies who want to advertise to you, whose money I am accepting in order to keep my business running.  If you have any concerns about the way I am running the blog, please email me at debbie@motivatingmum.co.uk

Note to Potential Sponsors/Advertisers

When I started writing this blog it was not commercial – and I wanted to keep it that way.  Over the past year, I have become increasingly aware of commercial opportunities and I have begun to accept offers from reputable companies to publish sponsored posts, both on my blog and on my main website Articles and Features Section.

The subjects that I cover with sponsored posts are relevant to mums who are working from home, or to children aged 7-11.  I do not generally cover fashion, home furnishings (apart from office), food and drink or other home and lifestyle topics.

I am also happy to review products, services or activities which would be suitable either for business people to use (courier, communications services, printing…)  or would be suitable for 7-9 year old children.  I do not review any products outside these categories

If you want to send me something to review, please post it to:

Debbie O’Connor 8 Edgell Road, Staines,  Middlesex TW18 2ES

Disclosure Policy

In December 2011 the Office of Fair Trading ruled that bloggers must make it clear if a post is as a result of a commercial transaction.

Heather Clayton, Senior Director of OFT’s Consumer Group said: “The internet plays a key role in how people purchase products and services and the importance of online advertising continues to grow. The integrity of information published online is crucial so that people can make informed decisions on how to spend their money.

We expect online advertising and marketing campaigns to be transparent so consumers can clearly tell when blogs, posts and microblogs have been published in return for payment or payment in kind. We expect this to include promotions for products and services as well as editorial content.”

Following this ruling, any post that I make in 2012 and beyond will be labelled as a sponsored post if I have received any payment for the content of the post.  For review posts, I will make it explicitly clear what product or service I received for free.

Please note too, that if I receive a product or service for review, any review I publish will be my own honest opinion of how I found the product or service, including positive and negative elements where appropriate.  I reserve the right not to publish a review of a product/service I have received, and to publish any review in my own words, without any editorial control from the provider of the product or service.