Z Recommends' authentic and in-depth reviews have made it the leading destination for trusted product reviews for parents, and home to an active community of parent "influencers" who are highly engaged in assessing and recommending new products. Its consumer research on children's safety and and unflinching analysis of the children's product industry have garnered citations from or quotations in stories by the Washington Post, U.S. News and World Report, USA Today, the Sierra Club, Advertising Age, and scores of other blogs and websites, as well as serving as a launchpad for a host of significant news stories that have been picked up by print and online media and television.

Z Recommends was launched as a quite little product review and parenting blog by Jeremiah and Jennifer McNichols in the Fall of 2006. Within a few months Jeremiah and Jennifer could see that there was a significant audience of parents who were not served by the star ratings and anonymous reviews of sales-oriented and review-aggregating websites, and committed themselves to developing the best product reviewing blog for parents online. They quickly discovered that this meant researching and commenting on industry trends, practices, and the background behind many of the products, and the ZRecs product review evolved to become one of thorough testing, exploration, and the unabashed championing of innovative and creative solutions for parents.

In late 2007, Z Recommends launched PRIZEY, a destination website for online product giveaways for parents. The site now publishes 50-100 new giveaway listings per day, organized in a directory-style format, from more than 1,000 product review bloggers and online giveaway hosts.

In 2008, Z Recommends launched the ZRecs Guide to Safer Children's Products. Expanding on extensive listings of products with and without BPA compiled since early 2007, the ZRecs Guide collects and publishes company-provided information about a variety of chemicals present in products intended for use by children, or those to which children are frequently exposed. Sources for this in-depth product information include high-level company representatives, confidential testing reports, and a rigorous system of multiple checks and cross-checks with customer service representatives.

In the Spring of 2009, Jeremiah was named one of Parents magazine's fourteen Dads of the Year, alongside Barack Obama, Adam Sandler, children's prosthetics developer Robert Haag, and entrepreneur Andy Blackman Hurwitz.

The ZRecs Network of parenting blogs now includes several teams of talented bloggers. The network includes:

• Z Recommends, a product review, consumer research, and parenting blog. [Link | RSS | Email subscription]


• The Tranquil Parent, a green blog for parents with an emphasis on family wellness, health and safety. [Link | RSS | Email subscription]


• Punnybop, a blog about media for kids, with reviews of books, music, movies, and platform games and embedded entertainment content for each. [Link | RSS | Email subscription]


• PRIZEY, a giveaway hub for parents. [Link | RSS | Email subscription]

Jeremiah McNichols is also principal of Bloggy Sabi, a community of review bloggers that showcases new products available for review and provides a community for review bloggers to discuss products, web strategy, and blogging ethics. This service for companies, as well as advertising rates and the cost of other paid ZRecs services, are available on our latest rate card.

Network Policies and Principles

• ZRecs Network bloggers may not receive compensation from any company for coverage of their products on our sites. Large or costly samples may be returned at the company's request based on prearranged terms. Smaller samples are disposed of in the manner in which individual reviewers see fit. Core contributors keep no review items, unless a donation is made to charity for the value of the item, after taxes.


• Revenue for the ZRecs Network is earned through clearly-designated display advertising, through affiliate program commissions, particularly Amazon.com, and through clearly marked direct sales of products. Affiliate programs pay based on commission for products sold through affiliate links. ZRecs believes this is no more compromising than having bloggers manage their own display advertising, which small operations have no choice but to do. ZRecs bloggers are committed to the principle that items deserving coverage should be written about regardless of their potential for affiliate earnings, and that the potential for affiliate or other income must not influence our recommendations. To do so would be to undermine our credibility among readers and hurt not only our community but, in the long run, our bottom line.


• ZRecs generally avoids the use of affiliate programs operated by a single company. In the event that we do make such arrangements, we usually make explicit reference to any affiliate links used.


• ZRecs bloggers attribute all sources, including "via" links for content discovered through other blogs.


• ZRecs moderators reserve the right to delete any comments from network blogs that are highly inflammatory, that we consider to be published solely for the purpose of adding a link to a third-party site to our page, or that are otherwise off-topic or highly promotional in nature.