How we make money from this site — in plain English.
Amazon pays us a small commission when you buy through our links, at no cost to you. That funds the testing. It does not influence the rankings. Here is exactly how it works and exactly how we keep it honest.
One paragraph, then the details
Countertop Advisor participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program — an affiliate advertising program that pays sites like ours a commission for linking to products on Amazon.com. When you click a product link on this site and complete a purchase on Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon pays us a percentage of the sale. The price you pay is exactly the same whether you use our link or type the product into Amazon yourself. The commission funds editorial work — testing, photography, updates, hosting, and the time the three of us spend writing.
How to spot an affiliate link on this site
Three signals, every time.
The HTML attribute
Every commercial link is tagged rel="sponsored noopener". This is Google's standard disclosure attribute for affiliate links. You can right-click any product link and inspect it to verify.
The URL
The destination URL contains our Amazon Associates tag (tag=countertopadv-20), which is how Amazon credits a sale to our site. This is visible in your browser's status bar when you hover over the link.
The page-level notice
Every review and best-of round-up displays an FTC-compliant disclosure note near the top — typically a single line stating that we earn a commission on qualifying purchases.
What this means — and doesn't mean — for our picks
A financial relationship is real. So is the firewall we put around it.
-
✓Rankings are based on performance, not commission rate
The cheapest pick in a category often pays us less than the runner-up. We frequently recommend the cheaper one anyway because it's better. Anyone gaming an Amazon site for commission would do the opposite.
-
✓We recommend products that pay us nothing
When the best option for a job is a Granite Gold product sold direct, a fabricator-only sealer, or a Home Depot in-store-only item, we recommend it anyway and link out without affiliate tags.
-
✓"Best of" rationales are in the review
If you can't read the recommendation and immediately see why a product won — beyond marketing-speak adjectives — we've failed our own standards. Email us when that happens.
-
✓We name losers too
A best-of guide that loves every product on Amazon is a content farm. Real reviews say which products to skip. Ours do.
What we will never do
The list of things we say no to is longer than the list of things we say yes to. By design.
-
✕No paid reviews
We do not accept payment for a review, ever. Not direct, not through a PR agency, not as a "consulting fee," not as a "co-branded research project." The answer is always no.
-
✕No paid placement in best-of round-ups
Brands ask. We say no. The order of products in our round-ups reflects how they performed in testing, full stop.
-
✕No links to products we have not personally used
If you see a product link on this site, at least one of the three editors has used the product in their own home or shop. We don't link out to things we've only read other reviews of.
-
✕No coupon-stuffed "deals" pages
Every page on this site is editorial. We do not publish thin "Top 20 Deals" round-ups whose only purpose is the affiliate click. If a product is genuinely on sale and we genuinely recommend it, we say so in the existing review.
For our broader review process, see Editorial Standards.
Other affiliate programs we participate in
From time to time we participate in additional affiliate programs — typically for retailers like Home Depot, Wayfair, or specialty stone-care brands (Granite Gold, Tenax, MB Stone Care) when those programs cover products we already recommend. Any such links follow the same rules: tagged rel="sponsored", never influencing rankings, and never the determining factor in whether a product is included.
If we ever participate in a non-affiliate revenue stream — programmatic display advertising, for example, which we are not running today but may test in the future — we'll update this page and the homepage with the date and an explanation. Material changes to how we make money will never be silent.
Something on this site read like a paid placement?
Tell us. We take editorial integrity more seriously than the commission on any one sale — and a reader who catches a soft pick does us a favor.