We’re Proud to Disclose our Affiliations
When you follow some of the links on our pages (and in our books) to external sites, Cogipas will receive a percentage of any purchases you make during that visit. This will not increase the cost to you of any of your purchases. These commissions help to keep the rest of our content fresh and free, so thank you!
Rest assured that our judgement remains unbiased. In all cases we have personally tried the products we recommend at our own cost. We are not swayed by freebies and we do not accept any sweeteners or extras to recommend products on Cogipas. You shouldn’t worry about us recommending poor products as we wouldn’t want to undermine the reputation of this site, our founder’s books or any of our related efforts.
Honesty Really is the Best Policy
In fact, we try to look at this Disclosure Statement and being transparent about affiliations as a competitive advantage. The more open and honest we are with you, the more credibility we will earn from our readers and the more trusted our reviews will be looked upon.
Unlike many other blogs who bury their disclosure statement (if any!) on some obscure page, we want ours to be upfront and transparent. That’s why you will find it prominently featured on every page. Integrity should count for something. And we think (hope) that you, our loyal readers, will agree.
About Affiliate Links
You can identify affiliate links on our sites when you see references that are to external sites but that still begin with our domain name when you hover your mouse over them. These links then “redirect” to affiliate links. We do this because a link such as www.cogipas.com/example is a lot more appealing to the eye than ugly URLs such as www.example.com/id=655&aff=5667&prod=77766.
When you see a product that is free yet still linked via Cogipas, this means we may still earn a benefit even when you don’t pay anything. For example, with the free password manger app Lastpass, if you install the app based on our recommendation (following our link www.cogipas.com/lastpass) we earn a free month of Lastpass’ Enterprise package (total value to us about $1 even though you spent nothing).
We also think that being clear about our affiliations helps protect the select affiliate programs to which we belong. There seems to be a trend towards holding affiliate programs responsible for the “dirty tricks” of their affiliates – here’s an example. Therefore, by being open and honest, we also protect and fully respect our affiliate programs.
“Being an affiliate is bad! You’re evil!”
Um, not really.
Our interests align with those of our readers.
If we recommend crap products, this will hurt us.
Think about it.
If we recommend crap products, readers will ultimately not sign up.
For example, almost all VPN services now have a money-back guarantee and all the VPNs we recommend certainly do. If we recommend garbage, customers will simply exercise their money-back guarantee and get their full money back.
Similarly for Usenet, customers will utilize the free trial period offered by the Usenet providers we recommend. If during this time they discover the Usenet provider is crap, they will cancel their free trial and not sign up for a paid plan.
And if customers do like our recommendation and keep renewing their service, we will continue to make a small “recurring” commission. So why exactly would we recommend garbage?
Our incentives align with your interests and that’s why you can trust our reviews. 🙂
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For all these reasons we believe it is in everyone’s interest to be fully transparent in these respects and it is the reason why this disclosure statement is probably among the most open you will ever see. Thank you!
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