How We Make Money — Full Affiliate Disclosure

Transparency is one of our core values. This page explains exactly how SwimmingAdvisor makes money, why that doesn’t influence our recommendations, and what happens when you click a link on our site. If anything here isn’t clear, ask us directly — we’ll answer honestly.

Here’s the headline: We earn commissions through Amazon affiliate links. That’s our only revenue source. It doesn’t affect what we recommend, and it never will.

The Short Version

Most people don’t need the full breakdown. Here’s what matters:

• We participate in the Amazon Associates program. Some links on our site point to Amazon product pages.
• If you click a link and buy something, we may earn a small commission — typically 1–4% of the purchase price.
• It costs you nothing extra. The price you pay is exactly the same whether you use our link or go to Amazon directly.
• We don’t know who buys what. Amazon tells us “someone purchased something” in aggregate — not who, not what specifically.
• Commissions don’t influence our picks. We recommend products because they performed best in our tests, not because of the commission rate. Period.

How Affiliate Links Work — Step by Step

The key detail: the cookie lasts 24 hours and applies to your entire Amazon cart — not just the product we linked to. If you click our link for a pool vacuum but end up buying a garden hose, a book, and a pack of batteries, we earn a commission on the whole order. You still pay the same prices.

Why We Use Affiliate Links

SwimmingAdvisor is free for readers. There’s no paywall, no subscription, and no premium tier. Creating thorough, tested buying guides takes significant time and money — we purchase products at retail prices, spend weeks testing them, and invest hours in writing and updating each guide.

Affiliate commissions are how we cover those costs and keep the site running. We chose this model deliberately because:

• It aligns our interests with yours. We only earn if you find our recommendations helpful enough to act on them. If our guides were bad, nobody would click — and we’d earn nothing.
• It keeps the site free for everyone. No paywall means our guides help the widest possible audience — including people who can’t or don’t want to make a purchase.
• It preserves editorial independence. We’re accountable to readers, not to a single sponsor or advertiser who might pressure us to favor their product.

Does It Cost You More? No. Here’s Why.

When you click an affiliate link and buy a product on Amazon, the price you pay is identical to what you’d pay if you navigated to Amazon directly and searched for the product yourself.

Amazon’s commission comes out of their profit margin — not yours. Think of it as Amazon paying us a small referral fee for sending a customer their way. It’s the same model used by Wirecutter, Consumer Reports (for their affiliate links), and virtually every independent review site.

In some cases, our links may even save you money — we often link to products that are on sale or offer coupons, and we update our guides when prices change.

Our Commitments to You

What We Don’t Do

Some review sites engage in practices we consider unacceptable. Here’s what you won’t find on SwimmingAdvisor:

• No paid placements or “sponsored” recommendations. If a product is on our list, it earned its spot through testing — not through a payment to us.
• No commission-rate shopping. We don’t research which products pay higher commissions before writing a guide. We research which products perform best.
• No fake reviews or AI-generated recommendations. Every product we cover has been tested by a human being in a real backyard. We don’t generate recommendations from spec sheets and user reviews.
• No hidden affiliate links in unrelated content. We only link to products in the context of relevant buying guides. We don’t sneak affiliate links into unrelated articles.
• No review manipulation based on affiliate status. We don’t drop products from our guides because they’re not available through Amazon, and we don’t add products just because they have affiliate programs.
• No urgency tricks or fake scarcity. We don’t use countdown timers, “only 3 left” messages, or other manipulative tactics to pressure you into buying.

How We Test Products — Independent of Affiliate Status

Our testing process is completely separate from our affiliate relationships. Here’s the sequence we follow for every guide:

1. Research phase: We identify every credible product in a category based on specifications, user reviews, brand reputation, and reader requests. We don’t filter by whether a product has an affiliate program.
2. Purchase phase: We buy shortlisted products at retail prices using our own budget. No review samples accepted. No manufacturer contact.
3. Testing phase: We test products in real backyard conditions over days or weeks. We score them on a consistent rubric that doesn’t include commission rate as a factor (it’s not on the rubric at all).
4. Writing phase: We write the guide based on test results. Only after the recommendations are finalized do we check whether affiliate links are available for the winning products.
5. Update phase: We revisit guides regularly and re-test when products change. If a product declines in quality, we update the guide — regardless of commission implications.

Why Reader Trust Matters More Than Short-Term Revenue

We could make more money in the short term by compromising our standards — recommending products with higher commissions, accepting sponsored placements, or writing glowing reviews of mediocre products. Some sites do exactly that.

We take the opposite approach because we’re building SwimmingAdvisor for the long term. The internet is full of review sites that burned reader trust for quick revenue and then faded into irrelevance. We want to be the site you come back to year after year — the one you recommend to friends, the one you trust enough to act on.

That trust is earned through consistency. If we ever recommend a product that disappoints you, we want to hear about it — and we’ll investigate. If a product we recommend has a widespread quality issue, we’ll update the guide. Transparency isn’t a marketing tactic for us. It’s the foundation the entire site is built on.

In Summary

SwimmingAdvisor exists because founder Sarah bought a bad pool based on unreliable reviews and wanted to create something better. That origin story shapes every decision we make. We earn money through Amazon affiliate commissions — and that’s it. We don’t let it influence what we say. We never will.

If you have questions about any of this, or if you want to know more about how we test a specific product category, write to us. We answer every email personally, and we’re happy to pull back the curtain on anything we do.