So, occasionally you might see links labeled with “Affiliate Link.” What’s that? It’s a link that passes along referrer information to the website you land on. Then, if you buy something, I get a small cut of the purchase price. Say you get a link to some cool deck and buy it? I might get 5% of that.
Couldn’t affiliate links get in the way of someone’s objectivity?
Hell yeah it does. I almost didn’t want to do it at all. But I won’t accept affiliate pay from anyone who wants to control what the narrative of each review is. Furthermore, this isn’t my real job. This is a hobby. I see it as an acceptable loss to keep it running. I don’t need the money as much as I need my integrity, it’s just nice to have a little boost to keep this little site going. Skate companies are generally pretty cool about this too. They’re (usually) not some giant soul-crushing corporation with abused and underpaid workers. They’re usually small businesses made up of people who are passionate about what they do. I’ll support these small companies over large corporations any day.
But, most importantly, I’m not going to compromise my reviews for a few bucks. This is a small blog and that’s all I ever want it to be. I don’t want to get to the point where I have to play nice with companies to keep getting paid. So if a company doesn’t like my review and threatens to pull my affiliate status, they can go ahead. But honestly? The stuff I review is made with the love of skating in mind, not corporate shills looking to make a buck. That just isn’t something I’m worried about.
If I receive anything for free, or could get paid for linking, I’ll let you know. Integrity isn’t worth whatever they’re paying, but you deserve to know what’s going on behind the scenes and decide for yourself.