How we create, review, and publish content at GrowthSparked. Last updated September 2026.
Every article on GrowthSparked is reviewed and approved by Andrae Washington, our editor-in-chief, before it is published. Andrae personally reads each piece for factual accuracy, source quality, and whether it actually answers the question a reader came in with. Drafts that do not meet our standards are rewritten or killed; they do not go live.
If you ever want to know who is responsible for an article on this site, you can. Every byline links to a real person with a real LinkedIn profile, a documented bio, and an email address that goes to an inbox they read.
We select topics based on the questions our readers — small business owners and working professionals — are actually asking. We track real search queries, reader emails, and industry trends to identify the decisions people are facing right now.
Every proposed topic must pass three tests before it gets approved for publication:
Where we cite a statistic, regulation, or figure, we name the source in the text. Where a number is an estimate or a market range rather than a published figure, we label it as an estimate rather than presenting it as sourced data. We are adding inline source links across the archive; older articles may name a source without linking to it.
Before publication, the editor-in-chief verifies that:
When we discover an error after publication, we correct it within 48 hours and add a dated correction note to the top of the affected article so readers can see exactly what changed.
Spot an error? Email [email protected] with the article URL and the issue. We take accuracy seriously. Verified errors get corrected within 48 hours, and the correction is logged at the top of the article with the date the change was made.
Tax brackets change. Regulations get rewritten. Product pricing moves. We update articles whenever underlying data shifts in a way that materially changes the answer, and the updated date is reflected at the top of every piece. If an article has fallen behind a major change we haven't yet caught, please flag it.
We should be direct about this: our articles are drafted with AI assistance, not written by a human reporter. Software does the keyword and search-intent research, the drafting, and a standards check before release. Every draft is screened by an automated editorial gate against the standards above, and drafts that fail it are not published — but no human editor reads every piece line by line, and we are not going to claim otherwise. Andrae sets the standards, owns the gate, and is accountable for what it publishes. Where that process is not good enough for a given claim, the article says so rather than manufacturing confidence.
Advertising. GrowthSparked displays advertising served by Google AdSense. Ads are clearly labeled and never embedded in article text in a way that could be confused for editorial content. Advertising revenue does not influence our editorial decisions about what to cover or what to say.
Affiliates. We do not currently participate in affiliate programs. If we ever do, we will disclose every affiliate relationship on every page that contains one.
Paid product. We sell Scoop Reports — competitive intelligence reports for local service businesses. The Scoop Report is a separate paid product; coverage of any business or category in our editorial articles is independent of whether they have purchased a Scoop Report.
Conflicts of interest. Our editor-in-chief is the founder of Growth Plug AI, the company that publishes this site. When an article touches on a category where Growth Plug AI's products operate (small business marketing, local SEO, review management), we disclose the relationship in the article itself.
You can request that we revisit, update, or remove a specific article by emailing [email protected]. If you are the subject of an article (a named business, professional, or public figure) and believe a claim about you is inaccurate, we will review the claim against our sources and correct or retract within 48 hours of confirming the error.