Commercial relationships

Affiliate disclosure

This page explains how UBWHY may be paid, what gets disclosed, and why a commercial relationship never decides a verdict. It matters because the same publication that analyses a product may earn money when a reader buys it. Expect the policy in full, including what disclosure does not prove.

Last reviewed

What an affiliate relationship is

Some UBWHY pages and videos may contain affiliate links. An affiliate link is a link that identifies UBWHY as the referrer, so that if a reader signs up or buys through it, UBWHY may receive compensation from the company.

Where a link is an affiliate link, it is clearly identified as one.

What this costs the reader

UBWHY may receive compensation when a reader signs up or buys through an identified affiliate link. Any confirmed effect on price, discount, bonus or other terms is disclosed with that link.

This page makes no blanket promise that using an affiliate link costs a reader nothing. Whether a programme changes the price, the bonus or the terms is a fact about that programme, and it is established and stated for each one rather than assumed for all of them.

Nothing here says the product is cheap, good value, or right for you. Those are questions for the analysis, not for this page.

Where disclosure appears

Disclosure appears on the analysis it relates to, close to the relevant recommendation or link, not buried at the end of the page and not left to this policy page alone. Each analysis carries its own disclosure describing the relationships that apply to that product.

Affiliate status

Every analysis records one of four states, and shows it:

None
No affiliate relationship exists for this product.
Pending
A relationship is under consideration. No affiliate link is published, and the verdict is written before any link is approved.
Approved
A relationship exists and has passed editorial approval. It is disclosed on the analysis.
Rejected
A relationship was considered and turned down. No affiliate link is published.

A link is only approved after the analysis is complete: the costs and risks stated, the suitable and unsuitable reader defined, alternatives acknowledged, and the recommendation still defensible without the commission. If any of those fails, no link is added.

The analysis and verdict are completed independently of whether UBWHY has, or may have, a commercial relationship. No affiliate link is approved until the analysis is complete, and compensation may not determine the conclusion or suppress material criticism.

That wording is deliberate. A relationship with a company can predate UBWHY's analysis of its product — the GoMining ambassador relationship does — so the promise this page can honestly make is about independence and sequence, not about which came first.

For anything still to be agreed, the rule is stricter and unchanged: the analysis must be completed before a sponsorship is accepted, before promotional wording is agreed, before compensation is negotiated, before an affiliate link is approved, and before a recommendation is published.

Products do not automatically receive a link, and some analyses carry no link at all.

Other relationships and interests

Where relevant, UBWHY also discloses, on the analysis concerned:

  • personal use of the product;
  • complimentary access, upgraded status, gifts or discounts;
  • referral benefits and ambassador or similar arrangements;
  • personal holdings or positions connected to the product;
  • whether the company reviewed the page for factual accuracy.

A declared interest is always accompanied by an explanation of what it is. A flag with no explanation is not a disclosure.

Sponsorship

Sponsored content, if it appears, is labelled and visibly separated from independent analysis. A sponsor cannot approve a verdict in advance, cannot prohibit material criticism, and cannot have a sponsorship presented as though it were an independent recommendation.

Archived analyses

When an analysis is archived, its active recommendations and affiliate links are removed. An archived page cannot keep an approved affiliate state, and the publishing system rejects one that tries to.

What disclosure does not prove

Disclosure is not a guarantee of independence. Saying that a relationship exists does not neutralise it, and no publication can claim to be beyond influence because it published a notice.

What disclosure does is tell you what to weigh when you read the verdict. The protections that actually matter are structural: the analysis is completed before any link is approved, the conclusion must hold without the commission, and a negative verdict is never suppressed to protect a commercial interest.

The rules that back this up.

Current status

Generated from the published analyses and this site's own configuration when the page was built, so it cannot describe a state the site is not in.

  • No affiliate link and no referral code is published anywhere on this site.
  • No product has completed UBWHY’s affiliate approval, so no analysis carries an approved affiliate status.
  • A commercial relationship exists and is disclosed, without any published link, for: GoMining. The relationship is recorded on the analysis it concerns.
  • Research is still incomplete, and no verdict has been reached, for: GoMining.

An existing relationship is not the same as an active link. UBWHY holds a GoMining ambassador relationship that predates the analysis of the product, and it is disclosed on the analysis it concerns. No referral destination is published, no product has completed affiliate approval, and the relationship creates no recommendation.

This is the current policy. It is reviewed on the date shown above, and it will be supplemented with product-specific disclosures before any affiliate link is published.