You shouldn’t have to wonder how a site about money makes its money.
The two ways we’re paid
Display advertising. The ads you see are placed by advertising networks, priced by audience, and clearly ads. Advertisers don’t choose what we write, don’t see it before you do, and can’t buy their way out of coverage. Ads are never dressed up as articles, and there are some pages such as the tools, and guidance for people in difficulty, that carry no advertising at all.
Affiliate links, occasionally. Where a product or service genuinely helps with something we’re writing about, a link may earn us a small commission at no cost to you, through programmes like Amazon and Awin. Those links are marked, they follow the recommendation rather than lead it, and they play no part in which companies we investigate or what we say about them.
What we never take
No share of your money. When you win using anything you learned here, you keep one hundred per cent. Every tool, every template, every guide is free, and there is no premium tier hiding behind any of it.
No money from the companies you complain about. We don’t take payment, hospitality or favours from firms we cover, and “sponsored content” does not exist here.
No claims-firm money. We don’t sell your details as leads, we don’t take claims-management advertising, and we never will. A site that teaches you to complain for free can’t also be paid to send you somewhere that charges.
Why the sums work
The advertising exists to keep the site running. A publication like this has real costs: hosting and security, the tools that monitor regulators and ombudsman schemes for changes, and the largest cost by far, the time. Every guide on this site is researched against primary sources, checked against the current rules, and revisited when those rules change, and that work has to be paid for somehow. The alternatives would be charging readers, taking a cut of outcomes, or letting the guides go stale. We’re not prepared to do any of those, so advertising carries the cost instead. This means the site stays free to use, and stays accurate, without ever needing anything from you.
A publication needs a small amount from advertising across many readers. The second model only works if the site is genuinely worth reading and returning to. This means our incentive is accuracy, not conversion. It is the business model we have chosen.
If money ever shapes an editorial decision here, that’s a failure worth reporting and we’ve built the place to report it. How we keep the wall between money and words is in the editorial policy.