Legal
Affiliate disclosure
How this site makes money, what it costs you, and the firewall between commission and what gets recommended.
In plain terms: some links here earn us a commission if you buy. It costs you nothing extra. It has no effect on which products we recommend or how they are scored, because scores are set before any link is added.
Overview
How we earn
Desk Doctor participates in affiliate programmes, including the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
When you click an affiliate link and buy something, the retailer pays us a small percentage of the sale. The price you pay is identical to what you would pay going to the retailer directly.
This is how the assessment stays free. There is no paywall, no premium tier, no upsell, and your email address is never sold or rented.
Independence
What commission does not buy
Commission has no influence on:
- Whether a product is reviewed
- What DEAS score it receives
- Where it places in a ranking
- Whether it is recommended to you in your assessment report
Scores are assigned against the published DEAS rubric before any affiliate link is attached. Ranking order is the composite score, nothing else.
No brand has ever paid for placement, and no product has ever been included because a company asked. If a paid relationship ever existed it would be labelled on the page carrying it.
How it is marked
Identifying affiliate links
Affiliate links are marked in the page code with rel="sponsored nofollow", which is how search engines are told a link is commercial. Articles containing them carry a disclosure near the top, before the first recommendation rather than after it.
Not every link is an affiliate link. Links to research papers, standards bodies, other articles on this site and manufacturer documentation earn nothing.
The honest part
Where the incentive sits
Any site that earns commission on purchases has an incentive to recommend purchases. The way that is handled here is structural rather than promised:
- The assessment report separates free fixes from purchases, and puts free fixes first. Most people get meaningful relief without buying anything
- Equipment is only recommended where adjustment cannot solve the problem
- Articles state plainly when a product category has weak evidence behind it, even where that costs a sale
You are entitled to weigh that for yourself. The editorial policy sets out how content is produced, and the DEAS methodology is published in full so you can check the reasoning rather than trust it.
Contact
Questions
If you have a question about a commercial relationship on this site, ask through the contact form.