Affiliate marketing is one way independent websites can fund research, software, hosting, editorial work, and product-discovery tools without charging every visitor a subscription fee.
When we participate in an affiliate program, a merchant or affiliate network provides trackable links. If a visitor follows one of those links and later completes a qualifying transaction, the merchant may pay us a commission. The visitor generally does not pay a higher price simply because an affiliate link was used.
Affiliate relationships can also provide structured product feeds containing titles, images, merchant SKUs, prices, and destination links. We can use those feeds to keep product-discovery pages more current than a manually maintained catalog.
Transparency matters. We disclose affiliate relationships, identify sponsored placements where appropriate, and treat merchant pricing and inventory as information that can change. Our goal is to make the site useful enough that visitors would want to use it whether or not a particular product generates revenue.