Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but the IKEA one which they singled out as not recommended to buy is the only one in the article they don't earn a commission on when someone buys it
"you should instead buy a different purifier that totally coincidentally happens to pay affiliate marketing commissions."
in any case, if you really care about effective air purification, buy the largest/most powerful fan you can get (CADR tries to proxy this, but is an imperfect measure), because the critical factor is getting as much of the air volume through the filters before the dust settles (literally). filter effectiveness isn't nearly as critical as throughput.
nowadays i'd probably opt for two of the ikeas instead, and put them on opposite sides of the room (but not against a wall). that'd be cheaper and likely just as effective.
Their Amazon links are consistently broken to the point where the links don't point to products but are faulty search queries. Like, if you are going to compromise your reputation doing affiliate marketing, at least get the damn links right so I don't have to perform a Amazon search to find the actual product.
At least that's how I've always assumed the links work, not that you have to buy the exact product immediately.
As long as you end up on amazon's site, then the cookie was likely dropped and your next purchase may pay out affiliate commission to whichever publisher's links you most recently clicked through.
Their homepage currently suggests the following:
> We independently review everything we recommend. When you buy through our links, we may earn a commission [emphasis mine]
The "about" page claims:
> There’s no incentive for us to pick inferior products or to respond to pressure from manufacturers—in fact, it’s quite the opposite [emphasis mine]
That's not really true when the same person who writes the reviews is the one trying to solicit kickbacks in the background, and puts the credibility of the entire website into question. Their adjusted review could be completely legitimate but there's no way to be sure so it's better to err on the side of caution.
When they switched their recommendation to Fully, they apparently didn't have an affiliate relationship with them, either. NextDesk calls that "false" — but based on Wirecutter linking to Amazon to earn a commission. That's a bizarre conflation (although like you said it's not nothing) but it's what Wirecutter usually did regardless of the product, and they were up front about it at the time [1].
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20150603092537/https://thewirecu...
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150518125823/http://thewirecut...
(Wirecutter used the word "kickback" here, too, so if anything it seems like they were trying to be as uncharitable as possible about their own model.)
The CEO was explicit in his email that he looks to maximise revenue on the standing desks page (and by implication, every other page on the site).
The "business team" was explicit - the editorial team doesn't act directly, they can only get review units arranged by the business team - which is refusing to receive review units because no affiliate program is in place.
Also, it's not really clear to me that "independently review" has to mean "we completely isolate any business-related decision-making from editorial functions" as Nextgrid seems to assume.
If I buy products that they recommend and they’re shit, I won’t go back and click anything again in my life. Making an extra $3 from on purchase isn’t worth it.
Frankly, for "okay" products, most of us don't need review websites. Even with the shit-show that Amazon reviews are it's usually easy enough to tell an outright bad product. The purpose of a review website (as a consumer) would be to find the absolute best product possible out of a sea of mostly "okay" ones.
Regardless of what they pick, they do not manage the affiliate links. Thats an entirely different process.
>> That's not really true when the same person who writes the reviews is the one trying to solicit kickbacks in the background
No. The person doing the review has no insight or commission on any affiliate income.
Whether you like the NYT or not, their coverage and reviews are made to the best of the abilities, and while mistakes happen, the writers are not trying to nickle and dime you.
And even if they do NOT take kickbacks, there's no financial incentive at all to "link" to a sales page that doesn't offer affiliate links, where there is one to link. And so the best way to handle this is to not review at all products that aren't available through said sites.
Think Southwest tickets not being available from aggregators.
And yet Wirecutter does this.
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-stuff-from-i...