How We Make Money

Most sites bury this on a legal page. We don't, because the honest answer is short.

The revenue streams

• Display advertising. A small number of programmatic ad slots on article and hub pages. They're clearly labeled and always render below the fold on article pages so they don't fight the reading experience.
• A newsletter sponsor. One sponsor per Friday newsletter, disclosed at the top of the send.
• Affiliate links, sometimes. When an article recommends a specific product and the retailer has an affiliate program we've joined, the link can pay us a small referral fee at no cost to you. Articles that use one say so at the bottom.
• Reader support (planned). We're building a paid tier for people who want the archive downloadable and a monthly reader Q&A. Free articles stay free.

What we don't do

• We don't sell your email, name, or reading history to third parties. Our privacy policy backs that up in plain English.
• We don't publish sponsored articles disguised as editorial. A sponsor buys ad inventory; they don't buy the writer.
• We don't take payment to include a product in a "best of" list. If a piece recommends a card, a book, or a service, no one paid to be there.
• We don't run pop-ups, interstitials, or auto-playing video ads. If we ever do, this page changes first.

The firewall

Editorial decisions — what to write, who to recommend, what to warn against — are made by editors. Ad-buying and affiliate operations are handled separately. The writers don't know which brands are on the ad rotation this week, and the ad-ops team doesn't get to see drafts. If an editorial recommendation would embarrass a current sponsor, we publish it anyway.

The parent company

AdviceGuru is published by PGAM Media, a small independent publisher based in the United States. PGAM also runs a handful of other titles in unrelated verticals. No investor owns editorial voice; the editorial standards page is the whole rulebook.

If something looks off

Email editors@adviceguru.com. If a specific article's affiliate disclosure is missing or a sponsor label isn't clear, tell us and we'll fix it publicly. Any correction that changes the substance of a piece gets a dated correction notice at the bottom of the article.

Related reading: Editorial Standards, Disclosures, Privacy.