Affiliate disclosure

What a paid link is

If you click through to a tool and sign up, the tool may pay us a commission. It costs you nothing extra, and in most cases the price you see is the price everyone sees. Every such link is marked (paid link) next to it, and every page containing one carries a notice above the first link — not buried at the bottom.

What it is actually worth, honestly

Less than you might assume, and we would rather you knew. We checked 119 tools for affiliate programmes and could verify 51 against the vendor’s own terms. Most of the best products in this field pay nothing at all — among them ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Cursor, Zapier, Airtable, Midjourney and Ahrefs. Where commission exists it is usually capped at twelve months rather than lasting.

We mention this because it explains something structural: if we chased commission, we would have to steer you away from several of the tools we rate highest. That is not a trade we are willing to make, and the arithmetic is not close enough to tempt us.

Something we found that you should know

While researching the tool database we noticed that commission generosity runs against product quality with unsettling consistency. The tools with the most aggressive affiliate terms scored lower on our own editorial assessment than several tools that pay nothing. Anyone building a business on affiliate revenue in this category is under quiet pressure to recommend worse software. That is the pressure our ranking rule exists to resist.

How we handle it

• Ranking order is product quality, then whether it fits you, then business value, and only then commission. In that order, always. The full method is published.
• We list and recommend tools that pay us nothing, and we say plainly when a tool that pays well is not the one we would pick.
• Every tool link runs through a redirect we control. If a programme has not been approved, the link sends you to the tool’s ordinary website instead — we never guess at a tracking link.
• Affiliate terms carry the date we last checked them. Seven programmes closed during our research alone, so we re-verify rather than assume.

On our videos and emails

The same rule applies away from the site. Short-form videos carry an on-screen and spoken disclosure in the first seconds, not only at the end and not only in the bio. Emails containing paid links say so in the first line. Where a platform offers a paid-partnership toggle we use it as well — as an addition, never as a substitute.

People who recommend us may be paid

It works the other way too. We run our own affiliate programme: creators who recommend The AI Academy with their personal link earn a share of the sale. They are required to mark those posts as ads, to make no income claims and to use only content they have the rights to. If you see a post about us that is not marked as an ad, treat it as one — and tell us.