The Product Shortlist is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission from the retailer. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Here is exactly how that works and what it will never change.
What a link on this site actually does
Our retailer links run through addresses on our own domain that look like /go/amazon-product-name/ and forward you to the retailer with our referral code attached. Two things about them worth knowing. First, they cost you nothing — the price you pay is identical with or without our code; the commission comes out of the retailer’s side. Second, every one of them is marked sponsored in the page code, which is us telling search engines, in machine-readable form, that the link involves money. We count how many times each link is clicked so we know which reviews help people; we don’t collect anything about who clicked.
Commissions never decide verdicts
Verdicts are finalized before we check what a product pays. We publish SKIP verdicts and link those products anyway — a reader who buys against our advice is still a reader served, and hiding the link would only prove we had something to hide. If every product on this site paid us nothing, every verdict would be identical.
Button order isn’t for sale either
When a product is sold at more than one retailer, the button order follows reader value — the best combination of price, shipping, and return policy comes first, not the highest commission. When two retailers are genuinely equal for you and one pays us better, the better-paying one may lead, and this sentence is the disclosure of that rule.
Not every page is monetized
Some products we review have no affiliate program, and sometimes we simply have no link. Those reviews carry no retailer button and no commission notice — instead the page tells you plainly that we earn nothing on it either way. Our buying guides generally link to our own reviews rather than to retailers, which means most guide pages earn us nothing at all. They exist because they make the reviews more useful, and that’s the entire business case.
Gifted products
Brands sometimes send products for testing. When they do, the review says so, plainly, near the top, in the tested-by line. A free unit buys a disclosure, not a verdict — and our request policy is explicit that sending a product is consent to that arrangement.
Sponsored content
We don’t currently publish any. If we ever do, it will be labeled Sponsored, will never use our verdict badges, and will never appear inside a shortlist. A verdict badge on this site means one thing, and it isn’t for rent.
Retesting and corrections
Verdicts get rechecked in our Still Worth It? series. When a verdict changes or we get a fact wrong, the correction is dated and logged publicly at /corrections/ — the old verdict stays visible with a strikethrough, because pretending we were always right is its own kind of dishonesty.
Networks we work with
Amazon Associates. As we add retail partners and direct brand programs, they’ll be named here — this list stays current, and a network appearing here means the relationship is real, not aspirational.
Questions, answered
Does buying through your links cost me more?
No. Affiliate commissions are paid by the retailer out of their side of the sale — the price, shipping, and return policy you get are identical whether you arrive through our link or type the retailer’s address yourself. The only difference our link makes is who the retailer credits for the visit.
Why do your buttons say 'Check price' instead of showing a sale price?
Because prices move and pages don’t. Every price on this site is printed with the date we verified it, and the button wording is deliberate honesty about the gap: the number was true on the dated day, and the retailer’s page is the only place the current number lives. We never print crossed-out “was” prices — most of them are theater.
How do I know a verdict wasn't influenced by a commission?
You can check the incentives against the record. We publish SKIP verdicts on products that would have paid us, our verdict tally is public on the About page, and our testing method is documented at /how-we-test/. The strongest evidence is structural: verdicts are written before monetization is checked, and pages with no affiliate link say so — a pay-for-verdict operation would have no reason to build any of that.
What is a /go/ link?
It’s our own short address that forwards to the retailer with our referral code attached — for example, /go/amazon-product-name/. Routing links through our domain lets us fix a dead retailer link everywhere at once and count clicks without collecting anything about you. Every /go/ link is marked as sponsored in the page code and excluded from search engines.