How We Make Money
Gear & Grade earns a commission when you buy through our links. Here is exactly how that works, what it costs you, and what it does not change.
The short version. Some links on this site are affiliate links. If you buy through one, we get a small commission from the retailer. You pay exactly the same price you would have paid anyway. It does not change which product we recommend.
Who we earn from
Gear & Grade is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Our Amazon tracking tag is t5cycling-20.
Amazon is currently the only program we earn from. That is normal for a site launched this year: affiliate networks approve publishers individually, and we have not been approved for any bike-brand program yet.
Links we earn nothing from
A real constraint of this niche is that Amazon does not sell most flagship drop-bar bikes. When a comparison needs to mention a bike Amazon does not carry, we link to the brand as a plain reference and we earn nothing from that click. Those links carry no tracking at all. The brands currently in that category:
- Trek Bikes— reference link only, no commission
- Specialized— reference link only, no commission
- Giant Bicycles— reference link only, no commission
- Canyon— reference link only, no commission
- REI Co-op— reference link only, no commission
If we join one of those programs later, this page changes on the same day the links do. The links are built so that switching a program on is a one-line configuration change and never a rewrite of the recommendation.
What the commission does not do
- It does not decide rankings. Where the cheaper option is the better buy for a first-time rider, the cheaper option is at the top. There are several places on this site where the top pick pays us less than the bike below it.
- It does not buy a place on a list. No brand has ever paid to appear here and none ever will. We have never been contacted by one, either.
- It does not soften a verdict.Every product on this site carries a “skip this if” line naming who should buy something else. That costs us nothing, because it routes the reader to a different pick on the same page — but it is also just the honest thing to write.
- It does not cost you anything. The price is identical whether you use our link or type the URL yourself.
How the links work
Every product link on this site goes through a redirect at /go/<product> rather than pointing straight at a retailer. Two reasons: it keeps the affiliate tag in exactly one place in the codebase instead of scattered across forty pages, and it means a broken or replaced destination is fixed once rather than page by page. Every one of those links is marked rel="sponsored nofollow", which is what Google’s link policy requires of a monetized link.
You will also see #ad printed under every buy button, and a disclosure line near the top of every page that carries one. The Federal Trade Commission requires disclosure to be clear and conspicuous, and one line buried on a policy page does not meet that bar.
About the prices
Prices shown on this site come from Amazon directly and are stamped with the date they were checked. They expire automatically after 48 hours — if the refresh stops running, the numbers disappear and the buttons say “Check price” instead of showing you something out of date. Amazon prices change constantly, so the price on Amazon at the moment you click is the real one.
What we do not do
We do not run display advertising, we do not accept sponsored posts, we do not sell links, and we have no newsletter to sell you. Affiliate commission is the entire business model. How we pick covers the research process, and the editorial policy covers independence and corrections. If any of this changes, this page changes first.
Questions about any of it: contact us, or email info@gearandgrade.com directly.
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