Alinekart is free to read and costs money to produce. This page explains exactly where that money comes from, because you are entitled to know what commercial interest sits behind advice you are about to act on.
Display advertising
The site carries display advertising served by third-party ad networks. Those networks, not Alinekart, decide which specific ads you see, and they may use cookies and similar technologies to do it. We have no relationship with the advertisers whose ads appear and no knowledge of who they will be.
What that means in practice: an ad for a brand appearing beside one of our guides is not an endorsement, and it has no bearing on what the guide says. It is also possible for an ad to appear next to an article that is critical of that product category. We do not intervene either way.
What the ad networks collect, and how to limit it, is covered in our Privacy Policy.
Affiliate links
Some links on this site may be affiliate links. If you follow one and buy something, Alinekart may receive a commission from the retailer. The price you pay is the same either way — the commission comes out of the retailer’s margin, not out of your pocket.
Where affiliate links appear, they are there because a reader who has just finished reading about, say, filter ratings may reasonably want to go and look at filters. They are not the reason the article exists.
What advertising and commissions do not buy
This is the part that matters, so it is stated flatly:
- No brand can pay to be included in, or excluded from, a guide.
- No brand can pay to change how it is described.
- We do not publish sponsored posts, paid reviews, advertorial, or articles supplied by a brand or its agency.
- We do not accept guest articles, and we do not sell, exchange or insert links into existing articles on request.
- We do not accept free or discounted products in exchange for coverage.
- Commission rates play no part in which products or retailers we mention. We do not know most retailers’ rates and do not look them up when deciding what to write.
If any of that ever changes, this page changes with it, and the change is dated.
Why we are strict about this
A buying guide is only worth reading if the writer had nothing to gain from the conclusion. The moment a guide’s recommendations track its commission rates, the guide is an advertisement wearing a guide’s clothes — and readers work that out faster than publishers expect. Keeping the commercial side walled off from the editorial side is not a courtesy; it is the only thing that makes the advice worth your time.
Our Editorial and Review Policy sets out the editorial half of the same commitment.
Questions
If you want to know whether a particular link is an affiliate link, or whether a particular article has any commercial arrangement behind it, ask: hello@alinekart.com. We will answer specifically rather than pointing you back at this page.