Ok, this may be more of a necessity than fun to read, but you know I’ve gotta do it:

Disclaimer, Site Use, Privacy, & Safety Precautions

  • Ugly Duckling House™ is created and written solely by Sarah Fogle, a first-time homeowner and student of DIY home improvement. I’m no expert – just a person enjoying the learning process and sharing it along the way.
  • This site does not ever sell or share your email address or any other contact info to outside companies (unless you’re the winner of a giveaway and they need your address to ship your prize, for which I will first ask you to share this info).
  • I love and appreciate the time my readers take to comment on one of my posts. Most of the time, you will see your comment published the same day, but anonymous comments and ones with URLs attached are more heavily filtered by a plugin that saves me a little time and protects me from spammers. As the sole moderator for this site, any leftover comments that get past this plugin are pretty much left up to my discretion to approve. So if I think your comment is a little heavy-handed with self-promotion, or doesn’t support the post in any way, I may still interpret these as spam and delete them so that the comment section doesn’t get bogged down with things that take away from the discussion.
  • The opinions and statements found on this site are 100% mine, which may not always be full of sunshine and rainbows, but they are never intended to offend or attack any group or individual. I like to joke around as much as the next person, but comments on this site or on any of my social media accounts that I find offensive will be deleted. Bottom line: don’t be a dick, and we’ll all get along just fine.
  • The various home improvement & decorating suggestions and tutorials on Ugly Duckling House™ are not error-proof. I am not a licensed contractor, I don’t do construction projects outside of my home professionally, and I try to make it clear that I am posting about things I learn. They usually include a tip or two about the mistakes I made along the way. Safety should always be your #1 priority, so please take extra precautions and do the proper research before starting any project on your own. Checking with your local utility authorities, homeowner’s association rules, etc. is always advised and Ugly Duckling House™ (and it’s writer) cannot be held responsible for your personal safety or the outcome of your home improvement undertakings. If you’re injured attempting something you’ve seen on this site, or if a project doesn’t yield the results that you expected after following my tutorials, the Ugly Duckling House™ is in no way liable.

Images, Copyright, and Licensing

  • The Ugly Duckling House™ reserves the right to move, replace, or delete images or content without prior disclosure.
  • All photos that aren’t taken by the Ugly Duckling House™ are credited and linked to an outside source. They are believed to be in public domain and readily available on the internet (published according to the U.S. Copyright Fair Use Act, title 17, U.S. Code).
  • Photos not credited to an outside source have been taken by Sarah Fogle (aka Ugly Duckling House™ on this blog or @uglyducklingDIY on other forms of social media) and are protected. Failure to link back and credit this site as their source constitutes a copyright violation and subject to damages or licensing fees. Pinning which links back to the original content is always welcome. Individuals or non-brand affiliated blogs may use one of my images as long as a link back to the original post is clearly indicated near the image. I do not permit pinning of my photos from other sites (photos must have “no-pin” attributes). Eliminating or altering my watermarks, or adding text overlay to my photos is not allowed. Please contact me directly prior to utilizing my work in any collages or images designed to be used for Pinterest. I will allow this type of use only on a case by case basis and with express permission. Content originating from my site must always be linked directly to the original post/source on my blog. Please link with my site name “uglyducklinghouse.com” instead of vague titles such as “source”. Please do not copy or paraphrase my supply lists, instructions for tutorials, etc. as those were created strictly for use on this site and this site only. I welcome brands to contact me directly (sarah@uglyducklinghouse.com) for information on image use and sponsored collaborations related to my work.
  • Occasionally, I will post content from other blogs or readers that have provided me with images or text. By sending me this information, you are granting Ugly Duckling House™ permission to use it.
  • Duplicating text written for Ugly Duckling House™ hurts my Google page rankings because it’s considered to be repeat content. Please paraphrase or link to this site’s content as opposed to hitting your Ctrl+V.
  • The design and layout of Ugly Duckling House™ is created by my own time, effort, and exhaustive learning of code. Copying or mimicking its appearance (ie: the logo, tagline, etc.) is strictly prohibited. And rude.
  • In the interest of full honesty and transparency, any free stuff that I receive, products or services provided at a discounted rate, or giveaways that I host are fully disclosed. I have a personal interest in the integrity of this site, so I make every effort to disclose free product or sponsorship so that you always know that the review or opinion provided is 100% mine, both positive and negative.
  • In the same regard as the bullet point above, I link to online sources when sharing inspiration images or what I shop  for (such as on my Saturday on Six posts). These sources will sometimes contain affiliate links, which means that purchases made from these links earn me a small commission. Please note, however, that the items are picked based on my own personal tastes (however good or bad that might be).
  • In selecting sponsorship, I try to select only the kinds of companies offering goods or services related to the content that you’ll find on this site, and that which will appeal to my readers (i.e. home improvement, crafting, etc). However, I have no way of pre-screening each item that you may discover through this site. Purchases made through these linked affiliates must be handled between you and that vendor or company.
  • I do not actually give away anything or mail prizes out for giveaways. I got tired of the Telephone Game when I was six, so I let the company who sponsors the giveaway be responsible for that. Therefore, when you win a giveaway, I provide the sponsoring company with your contact information, and the two of you handle the claiming of your prize from there. I cannot be held liable for any prize not received since I am not directly involved with shipment or delivery. Any issues involving the shipment, delivery, receipt, (or quantity, quality, etc.) of a prize must be taken up with the company who sponsored the giveaway directly.
  • I use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit this website. These companies may use aggregated information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other Web sites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, please see: http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp

Disclosure

  • This blog is a personal blog written and edited by Sarah Fogle. For questions about this blog, please contact Sarah@ UglyDucklingHouse (dot) com.
  • This blog accepts forms of cash, sponsorship, products, or forms of service. Payments are accepted for the efforts of writing, photography, supplies, and time to create and edit content.
  • The compensation received will never influence the content, topics or opinions made in this blog. Sidebar advertising is in the form of advertisements generated by a third party ad network.
  • The owner of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics in individual articles. If such a sponsorship or compensation is received, it is disclosed as such within the article post. The views, findings, beliefs, experiences, and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers’ 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.
  • I don’t mind at all when fellow bloggers use their own affiliate or referral links in the comment section, but please note that in terms of this site and in keeping in line with third party affiliate policies, leaving a comment that contains referral/affiliate/monetized links is considered an “unsolicited commercial advertisement.” As such, this serves as notification that I use plugins (such as Viglink or Skimlinks) that sometimes replace these links with ones that have my own internal tracking system, which can and often do override the link’s original affiliate tracking.
  • Affiliate Disclosure: I am a participant in many 3rd part affiliate advertising programs designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to products and services on 3rd party sites. If disclosed on the page, then these types of affiliate links are being used.
  • I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Advertising Privacy Statement

This Site is affiliated with CMI Marketing, Inc., d/b/a CafeMedia (“CafeMedia”) for the purposes of placing advertising on the Site, and CafeMedia will collect and use certain data for advertising purposes. To learn more about CafeMedia’s data usage, click here: www.cafemedia.com/publisher-advertising-privacy-policy

To help understand your interests, AdThrive, Google and our other advertising partners will track your behaviour on our website and on other websites across the Internet using cookies.

A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server. Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed. Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies.

By using this Site, you consent to the use of such cookies and the sharing of data captured by such cookies with AdThrive, Google, and our other third party partners. You can view, delete or add interest categories associated with your browser by visiting: https://adssettings.google.com. You can also opt out of the network cookie using those settings or using the Network Advertising Initiative’s multi-cookie opt-out mechanism at: http://optout.networkadvertising.org. However, these opt-out mechanisms themselves use cookies, and if you clear the cookies from your browser your opt-out will not be maintained.

For European Economic Area Residents

If you reside in a country in the European Economic Area (EEA), then under the GDPR and applicable data protection laws you have the rights, among other things, to access your personal data, have us erase it, and/or restrict its further processing. If you wish to access or delete your personal data (if any) maintained by us or AdThrive related to advertising on the Site, you can contact us at contact@uglyducklinghouse.com and contact AdThrive at info@adthrive.com. If you wish to see a list of the advertising partners we work with or change which of those partners track your behavior using cookies, click the ad preferences link at the bottom of the site. (Available in the EU.)

For California Residents

California law gives residents the right to opt out of the “sale” of their personal information to third parties, including for advertising purposes. Under California law, the sharing of your information with a service provider for advertising purposes could be considered a “sale.” To opt out of the sharing of your information for advertising information, click the opt out link provided in the footer of this page. You also have the right to request from us the categories of personal information that we have shared and the categories of third parties to whom the information was provided. To make such a request, please contact us at info@adthrive.com. To be clear we do not share your name, contact information, or any other sensitive information with third parties, and the categories of third parties that we share information with for advertising purposes are supply side platforms, programmatic advertising exchanges, and demand side platforms.

That. Was. Joyful. Wasn’t it? But now that it’s out of the way, I hope you enjoy Ugly Duckling House™. And don’t forget to tell your friends!

P.S. Disclaimer/disclosure pages are always a bore to write and to read. I am totally fine with you using my policies page as a template for our own, provided that you say things in your own words (do not copy word for word!). That still hurts both our Google rankings (and if you read my policies above, you’ve now read that warning twice. That should be plenty. No one wants that.

Portions of this policy were provided by: disclosurepolicy.org