How we make money

Affiliate links

Many "Check price" and "Shop" links on this site are affiliate links. If you click one and buy something, the retailer pays us a commission. It costs you nothing extra and it does not change the price you pay. This is how most of our revenue is earned, and it is the reason we can buy products at retail instead of accepting free samples.

We are a participant in affiliate programs run by individual brands and by networks including Amazon Associates, Impact, ShareASale and Rakuten. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

What a commission cannot buy

• A score. Scores are set by the tester against the published rubric before any commercial relationship is considered, and a score only changes after a re-test. A brand that pays more does not rank higher.
• A place in a list. "Best of" rankings are ordered by score, not by commission rate.
• Silence. If a product fails, we say so, whether or not the brand pays us.

Brand partners

Brands can open a partner account to claim their listing, correct facts, supply photos, and run campaigns on landing pages we host for them. Partner pages are labeled as such. A partner cannot edit a review, a score or a reader review, and a partner relationship is disclosed on the pages it touches.

Products we are given

We buy the products we score. When a reader or a brand funds a test through the buy us a product form, we still buy the unit ourselves from an ordinary retail channel, so the brand does not know which unit we are testing. Anything sent to us unsolicited is not scored unless we also buy one.

Reader reviews and coupons

Reader reviews are unpaid, read by an editor before publication, and never blended into our score. Coupon codes shown on the site are checked by hand on the date shown next to them; some are exclusive codes negotiated with the brand and may carry a commission.

Questions

If anything on the site looks like it was influenced by money, tell us at hello@wiseconsumer.com and we will look into it publicly.