My #1 goal if this website is shared more in detail on my About page.
To summarize, it’s mostly because I was already journaling about all the strains I liked and decided that I might as well share them and try to promote a bit of responsible cannabis consumption along the way.
Much of current cannabis culture I love, but much of it just isn’t really my style and so I’m trying to create that, for fun.
How This Site Makes Money
I’m also a human residing in the capitalist nation of the United States of America and thus need income to buy things like loud ass flower for example.
As such, I will, at times, recommend various products or services on this website in which I may use an affiliate link to promote them.
An affiliate link is just a tracked link in which a brand will pay a promoter a commission, usually 2-5% of the transaction price, SHOULD someone convert via said link.
These commissions are baked into a product’s retail price and add zero extra cost to the person making the purchase.
Unfortunately, as soon as you start to incentivize sales with money (which 99.9% of sales is), you open the door to corruption of morals and dilution of intent.
A LOT of websites promoting products with affiliate links never even purchase or use the products themselves before pushing them on their viewers. As such, the information they provide isn’t always the most trustworthy.
Google has recently begun actively trying to filter out these dishonest actors by ranking them lower in their search engines if it is obvious they haven’t tried the product and are only in it for a quick buck.
They don’t get them all but I don’t need to convince you that scams exist on the internet.
Below I outline the policies I have in place to keep The Hallowed Gram existing as a fun and entertaining place to arrive at when surfing the web.
The Hallowed Gram’s North Star
To provide clarity as far as where The Hallowed Gram stands, I’ve set up a few guidelines to act as my true north star:
- Only include affiliate links for products or services I’ve first used my own money to purchase without the behest of any 3rd party, such as the brand itself or any form of marketing agency.
- Very clearly state on each page when an affiliate link is present so that users are aware of their existence when reading a review or experience and making purchasing decisions.
- Only include an affiliate link for a product or service that has been provided to me at no cost. This is the most common origin of most affiliate reviews online and is something I’m rejecting. I may still review free products (if I genuinely like them), but those reviews will never have affiliate links.
- Be selective with my affiliate link placement. The mission of the site connecting cannabis enthusiasts would be destroyed if it was usurped by the goal of profit maximization. As such, I will only use affiliate links sparingly when I truly love a product and feel the company is deserving of personal referral
- The goal must always try to be as close to “a friend recommended to me” as possible with any sort of Hallowed Gram endorsement.
- Feature my own photography, however shitty, to not only clearly convey aspects of my review visually but also to provide some level of evidence that I’ve actually purchased and used the product/service instead of just Google image searching or using stock photographs. I will still use stock photographs from Canva for artistic visuals but never as substitutes for products I review.
- Keep ads to an absolute minimum as to not distract from the reading experience!
I hope this helps provide some clarity, maybe more than you cared for, but in an earnest attempt to be as transparent with readers such as yourself as possible.
Maybe one day, we will all live in a socialist utopia where the primary form of commerce is the trade and exchange of artistic forms of expression, but until then, this disclaimer will have to stand.
If this all sounds good to you and want to be notified when I publish check out The Hallowed Gram email club.
Thank you for your trust,
Erik