How can you tell the difference between a good and a bad actor in the financial content creation – blogging, podcasting, and vlogging – space?
Reader, it’s hard.
Today, in service of both my readers and other creators, I’m going to talk in-depth about the issue of ethics in financial content creators. And rather than just discuss the problem, I’ve taken the time to create a solution.
Whatever the problem, be part of the solution. Don’t just sit around raising questions and pointing out obstacles.
Tina Fey
Frankly, I don’t often “blog about blogging” because, as a writer, my mission is not to help you build your own award-winning blog. I’m not here to tell you how to be featured on CNBC, Marketwatch, Yahoo Finance, MSN, and Business Insider like I have.
My mission is simple – to help people with their money, work, and frugal family life to ultimately reach financial freedom, while having fun along the way. There are other great resources if you want to learn how to build a blog.
I’ve made an exception today because I feel strongly about ethics. I spoke briefly on the topic at FinCon, and want to dive deeper today.
If you’re a content creator: I ask you to read on, and ultimately to pledge to follow these standards.
If you’re a reader: I ask you to read today’s article, and become a more critical financial content consumer. Ask yourself if the content creators you follow are following these simple standards. And if you also feel strongly about ethics, please share today’s article with others.
Table of Contents
Ethics and Financial Content Creation
I’ve been an avid financial blog reader for years (and years) before I started this site two years ago. As a reader, I never really gave a thought to how I could tell a good actor from a bad one. If I enjoyed the blog, I would read it. If I didn’t enjoy it, I would stop. Typically the blogs I like to read are either (1) based on compelling personal stories, or (2) full of technical, heavily researched articles.
I never gave a thought to their ethics, or ethical standards of blogging. Why would I? I enjoyed all this free content. It kept me entertained, educated me, and helped me in my financial path. I was grateful for all these strangers on the internet that spent so much time creating helpful information for me to consume.
The past two years, as a writer and blogger myself, I’ve had the opportunity to dive deep into the financial blogging space. I’ve met some amazing, compelling, passionate people I never would have found otherwise. Folks who will stop at nothing to accomplish their mission to help others. People with amazing stories, great writers, who take hours and hours out of their free time to write in the service of the greater good.
But I’ve also seen the darker side of financial blogging.
- People who write click-bait articles, designed solely to get eyeballs on their page. They’re not trying to help others. They’re trying to make ad revenue. A related situation is when people use their site to tear down others in a disrespectful way. This is also usually to get clicks and eyeballs.
- People who steal others ideas, paragraphs, images, or even whole articles – without giving credit.
- NOTE: This doesn’t apply to free stock photos, or content that explicitly lets you use it without attribution.
- Those that break the laws in place around promotions and affiliate links. Often accidentally, because they’re not aware the laws exist and what they say. But sometimes intentionally, because you can make more money that way.
- People who flagrantly break the rules of various social media platforms, forums, groups, and so on. Why? Because they can get more traffic that way
- Those that don’t care about accuracy or truthfulness. Perhaps they don’t do any actual research on their articles, relying on hearsay instead. Or they don’t publish corrections if they got something wrong. And lets not forget about people that deliberately spin their stories in a certain way in order to get more followers/eyeballs/clicks, leaving out key details that would totally change the way they’re perceived.
If you’re a financial content creator reading this, you’re likely one of the good actors. After all, why would a bad actor take time to read about ethical standards?
A Lack Of Standard Ethics
Journalists have ethical standards.
So do Certified Public Accountants, or CPA’s.
And CFP’s – certified financial planners.
Why not financial content creators?
Frankly, it’s because we don’t have a governing body. There’s no “certification” that you’re a legitimate financial content creator.
Literally anyone can start a financial blog in five minutes. You don’t have to have financial knowledge, be committed to helping people, pass a test, have a certification, or anything else.
We have no way to identify the good actors, and weed out the bad ones.
Anyone can fire up WordPress and write whatever they want, doing whatever they want. Unless you’re violating an actual law (and get caught doing so) you can put whatever you want to out on the internet.
Ethics are more than laws. They’re about morals, and the principles that govern what we do.
So today, I’ve created a solution. I’ve created the “Ethical Standards” for digital content creators. The content in the pledge was inspired by conversations with other content creators, and the ethical standards for journalists/CFP’s/CPA’s.
I ask you to read on, take the pledge, and share with others.
Ethical Standards For Digital Content Creators

Click here to download the PDF version
Truthful and Honest
I pledge to always tell the truth. The truth about my life, my products, my services, potential conflicts of interest, how and whether I make money, and everything else.
I pledge to be honest about my knowledge, background, and motivations. My audience will be clear about the fact that I am not a certified financial professional, their lawyer, and so on.
Abide by the Rules – And The Law
I will abide by the rules set on forums, social media platforms, companies I do business with, and any other platforms I use.
I will abide by copyright law. This means I will not take the content (articles, podcasts, videos, images) of others without permission and proper attribution when required. If I use free stock photos, content, music or videos, I check the licensing requirements to make sure I’m using them properly. I am also familiar with and follow, the copyright fair use guidelines.
If I take credit cards for a product or service, I (and/or my card vendors) are PCI Compliant.
In the event of a data breach, I pledge to follow the laws on security breach notifications.
If I do business in, or have readers/consumers in, the US, I will abide by the FTC Endorsement Guide. This means I will prominently and clearly disclose where and when I am being paid for an endorsement, or receiving payment from an affiliate program, or any other sort of payment
If I do business in, or have readers/consumers in, the EU and the UK, I will abide by the rules of GDPR. This means I will create a privacy policy outlining how and whether I collect and use their data, obtain clear consent for data collection, allow users to access and delete their data, and inform people if a data breach occurs
Respect For Others
Even when writing a critical piece, I pledge to be respectful of others
I pledge to make it clear to my audience when I am discussing facts, and when I am providing opinions, of others
I am familiar with and will follow the laws regarding libel (written) and slander (oral)
Respect For the Property of Others
I will not take the content of others. This means I will not use their writing, images, or other content without proper credit and attribution
I pledge to give credit when using someone elses ideas, or when my content is inspired by that of someone else
Independent
I pledge that my content is generally free of conflicts of interest
When a potential conflict of interest exists, I pledge to clearly and prominently disclose that to my audience
Accurate
I pledge that my content is as accurate and factual as possible. When I write on a topic, I will provide links to appropriate research that backs up what I say.
Since I am human, I recognize that mistakes will occur. When they do, I will correct them promptly
Take The Pledge
If you’re a reader, and you’ve gotten to this point in the article – thank you for caring about ethics in the financial content creation space. I invite you to share this article with others, and help me make financial content creation a better place to be.
If you’re a content creator like myself, committed to a high standard of ethics, I invite you to take the pledge.
Fill out the form below with your name, email, and website. If you take the pledge, I will add your name and a link to your website on this page. I will also send you an image you can display on your website, so your audience will know you’ve taken the pledge. Simply link that image to the ethics page, and your audience will see your website listed.
I won’t use your email for anything other than sending you the image and link to the page, and any future updates on the ethics pledge itself.
Lets work together to make financial content creation an ethical place to be!
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I agree, I have been an avid reader of this community of blogs for the last one year and have learnt a lot. Infact my current financial planning is more than 90% based on advice out of these blogs. However while these blogs themselves recommend blogging as a source of passive income , that is what it has become entirely for some bloggers. They often end up publishing the same content, same recommendations, same ‘steps to financial success’ filled with more and more affiliate links.
I don’t think we should really regulate this community by forming a governing body but people should adhere to a basic set of rules and your recommendations here are definitely a good place to start.
Authors pledging to publish accurate content must also commit to maintain that content, ensuring it remains current and accurate.
A reader should be able place equal trust in your content published two years ago as they can in your content published today.
Posts that are dated, rendered inaccurate by changing rules, or found wanting by emerging research, are just as misleading as those written by the dishonest/incompentent/lazy bloggers you are calling out here.
Absent this key commitment, the pledge is meaningless. Bloggers aren’t publishing their content in static print media, they are posting living content on platforms that make the maintenance or pruning of inaccurate content simple.
I strongly disagree that actively pledging to be truthful, honest, respectful, follow the law, accurate, and independent is “meaningless”.
For the pledge to retain meaning, the resulting content needs to remain: truthful, honest, respectful, following the law, accurate, and independent.
Consider the recent GDPR changes in Europe as an example. Previously tolerated behaviours became outlawed via a change in legislation. If a blogger didn’t update their practices and policies to reflect those new rules, they would no longer be honouring the pledge, as they were no longer following the law.
How about if the tax laws were changed to close the loophole that enables the Roth conversion ladder? Posts that continue to recommend that now outlawed approach would be leading their readers astray, no longer truthful nor honest nor accurate nor following the law.
Googling Madoff still returns a bunch of old blog posts espousing the virtues of investing in that “can’t fail” investment fund. Those bloggers could have all signed up to this pledge, and be honouring it with their new stuff, yet leaving their old erroneous/dated/misleading content out there for unsuspecting readers to discover and believe.
I have no problem with what you are calling for, just saying it needs to include a commitment to maintain.
Good governance is neither “one and done” nor “fire and forget”, it is requires ongoing diligence and effort.
I agree with the concept – we all need to keep ourselves abreast of changes in laws, news, and regulations that necessitate changes in our sites and content. In fact, I just saw this very thing happen with the new RobinHood checking and savings. The big press release of Thursday, with people espousing the “SIPC insured checking and savings accounts”, did not lead to everyone removing/updating their content when that was found inaccurate on Friday. There are still YouTube videos up (with hundreds of thousands of views) talking about how great they are, even after the quiet company retraction. I will give some thought as to how best to incorporate that.
Thanks for this. My last year’s goal to start a FI blog has rolled over to this year (though I did get 3SMReviews.com up and running) and when I do get it started, I’ll come back and take this pledge.
Wonderful!