Ok, I have now dug deeper and I see that Miles is indeed also positioned to profit from recommending Betterment. Initially I had looked at his blog's tax loss harvesting post (and a few more recent ones), which make no mention of his conflict of interest. (MMM and Mad Fientish are both pretty upfront about it, with MF's disclaimer being a little better than MMM's.) I had even remembered reading a post on Miles' blog about his lack of profit motive and conflict of interest. Now I've gone back and reread it:
http://www.milesdividendmd.com/painting-portfolios/In it, he debates the pros and con of monetizing the site, and he states that if he does ever choose to, then:
"I will be conflicted. And all that I can vow now, is that I will announce my conflicts of interest whenever I’m aware of them.
And I welcome you to call me out on any future conflicts in my writing should you become aware of them.
But it strikes me that one thing that I should do prior to accepting any advertisers is to advocate for the products that I truly believe to be excellent.
After all I am still unconflicted. So I thought I would take advantage of my own lack of ulterior motives to talk about a product that I think is quality [Betterment]."
Well, Miles, I am taking you up on your invitation and calling you out. You failed to disclose your conflict of interest in every subsequent post on your site recommending Betterment, ironically including the above referenced post in which you promised full disclosure. I consider myself a careful reader yet I still missed the fact that you actually do have a financial motive for pushing Betterment.
(Hopefully I'm not derailing this thread, but in light of the turn this discussion has taken and Miles' zealous advocacy for Betterment in this thread, I thought it would be appropriate to post this here.)