How We Make Money
MakerStack is free to read. We are funded three ways, and every review page carries a disclosure explaining how we make money.
- Featured placement fees. Makers can pay a one-time fee for a three-month slot in the Featured Tools section of our homepage, which also moves them to the front of the review queue. It buys the placement and our time, never the score, the verdict, or approval over the content. The review publishes at whatever score we reach; a poor score costs the maker the homepage slot, which we refund, not the coverage. Every paid placement is labelled at the top of the review.
- Sponsor placements. A monthly advertising slot in the Featured Tool frame. Clearly labelled, and entirely separate from reviews. Sponsoring does not get you reviewed and does not change a score.
- Affiliate commissions. We participate in affiliate programmes with a small number of the products we review, a handful out of several thousand. If you buy through one of those links we may receive a commission at no additional cost to you.
What This Means for You
Money can buy our attention. It cannot buy our opinion.
- Our ratings and recommendations are based on product quality, not on whether anyone paid us.
- Products reviewed without any commercial relationship get the same thoroughness as those with one.
- We never recommend a product solely because it pays us.
- Links that earn us a commission are marked with rel=”sponsored” as required by search engine guidelines.
Which Links Are Affiliate Links?
Only a small number of our outbound links are affiliate links. Where one is, the disclosure at the bottom of that review page says so explicitly. Every other product link is an ordinary editorial link that earns us nothing. Internal links to other MakerStack pages are never affiliate links.
Our Promise
We started MakerStack to help makers find the right tools. That mission only works if you trust our recommendations. We would rather lose a commission, or refund a review fee, than recommend a product we do not believe in. If a product is not good, we say so, regardless of who is paying.
Questions
If you have questions about how we are funded, contact us at hi@moonshot.ie.
