Affiliate Disclosure

This page explains what affiliate links are, whether and how we use them on this site, and what that means for you if you ever click one. We’re publishing this policy proactively, before it becomes strictly necessary, because we’d rather have clear rules in place from the start than write them reactively once money is involved.

What an affiliate link is

An affiliate link is a specially tagged link to a third-party product or service that, if you click it and then make a purchase or sign up, earns the site that referred you a small commission from the seller. It costs you nothing extra — the price you pay is the same whether you arrived through an affiliate link or a plain one — but it does mean the site publishing the link has a financial incentive tied to whether you click through and buy.

This is different from display advertising (banner ads, AdSense units), where we’re paid for showing an ad regardless of whether you interact with it. Affiliate links are specifically tied to referred purchases or sign-ups, which is why regulators and search engines treat the disclosure requirements for them somewhat differently, and why we’re addressing it in its own dedicated policy.

Our current position: we do not run affiliate links

As of the current version of this page, we are not running any affiliate links or affiliate partnerships on this site. Every recommendation, resource link, and external reference in our blog content and job listings is included because we think it’s genuinely useful to a UK job seeker — not because it earns us anything if you click it.

Why we’re publishing this policy anyway

We think it’s worth having this policy live and visible for three reasons. First, transparency works better set up in advance than retrofitted — if we ever do introduce affiliate relationships, having an existing, dated policy that predates the change makes our disclosure practice more credible, not less. Second, plenty of career-advice content across the web does involve affiliate relationships (with CV-writing services, online courses, résumé tools, and similar), and we think it’s fair to tell you clearly that we’re not currently one of those sites, rather than leaving you to wonder. Third, if a future partnership does make sense — say, a genuinely well-regarded UK-specific CV review service or interview coaching platform — we want the ground rules already established rather than invented under commercial pressure.

What would change if we introduce affiliate links in future

If we do start using affiliate links, the following commitments will apply from day one, and this page will be updated to reflect the change with a new “last updated” date:

• Direct, visible disclosure on the page. Any article or page containing an affiliate link will carry a clear, plain-language disclosure near the top of the content — not buried in a footer or a separate policy page you’d have to go looking for.
• No affiliate link disguised as editorial recommendation. If we recommend a tool, service, or resource and have a financial relationship with it, we’ll say so at the point of recommendation, not just in a general site-wide disclaimer.
• Recommendations based on genuine assessment, not commission size. We won’t recommend a worse product over a better one because it pays a higher commission. If we can’t honestly recommend something, we won’t include an affiliate link for it regardless of the commercial terms on offer.
• No affiliate relationships involving job application fees. We will never accept an affiliate arrangement that involves directing job seekers toward a service that charges a fee to apply for a job, receive an interview, or access “premium” job listings that should be freely available. This would conflict directly with our core position that legitimate job applications don’t require payment.
• Clear separation from job listings. Affiliate content, if introduced, will live in clearly identified blog content or resource pages — never mixed into or disguised as a job listing itself.

How this differs from our display advertising

To avoid any confusion: this site does display advertising, including Google AdSense, in clearly labelled ad slots separate from editorial content and job listings. That’s a different arrangement from affiliate marketing — we’re paid for ad placement and impressions/clicks on those specific units, not for referring you to a specific product through an embedded recommendation. Full detail on how display advertising works and is kept separate from content is on our Advertising Policy page.

How this connects to our broader editorial independence

Whether we’re talking about display advertising, potential future affiliate relationships, or editorial content generally, the underlying principle is the same, and it’s covered more fully on our Editorial Policy page: commercial relationships never determine what we publish, what we recommend, or how we rank job listings. If that principle is ever compromised, we’d rather you find out from us, clearly, than infer it from a suspicious pattern in our content.

What to do if you spot an undisclosed commercial relationship

If you ever come across a link or recommendation on this site that you suspect involves an undisclosed financial relationship — an affiliate link that isn’t marked as one, or a recommendation that seems to serve a commercial interest rather than your interest as a job seeker — please tell us via our Contact page. We take this seriously enough that we’d rather investigate a false alarm than let a genuine lapse in disclosure go unaddressed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you currently earn commission from any links on this site?

No. We are not currently running any affiliate links or commission-based partnerships. Every external link is included because we think it’s useful, not because it generates revenue for us.

If you start using affiliate links, will prices be higher for me?

No. Affiliate commissions are typically paid by the seller out of their own marketing budget and don’t add to the price you pay — this is standard practice across the affiliate marketing industry, and it’s a commitment we’d maintain if we ever introduce such links.

Will job listings ever include affiliate links?

No. Even if we introduce affiliate relationships for blog content or resource recommendations in future, job listings themselves — including the “Apply on Original Website” link — will never be affiliate links or involve any commercial relationship with the employer that affects whether or how a listing is published.

How will I know if this policy changes?

This page’s “last updated” date will change, and any newly introduced affiliate content will carry its own visible, in-context disclosure at the point you’d encounter the link.

Why we’re cautious about this category of commercial relationship specifically

Affiliate marketing done well is a perfectly legitimate way for a content site to earn revenue, and we’re not opposed to it in principle. But we’re conscious that career-advice content occupies a slightly more sensitive position than, say, a product review blog. Someone reading an article about CV-writing tools or interview coaching services is often at a genuinely vulnerable point in their working life — between jobs, anxious about money, or facing a deadline for an application. That’s exactly the situation where a subtly self-interested recommendation does the most damage, because the reader is less likely to scrutinise it critically and more likely to act on it quickly.

That’s part of why we’ve chosen to publish this policy now rather than waiting until we actually have affiliate relationships to disclose. We’d rather set the bar for ourselves in a moment with no commercial pressure attached to the decision, so that if we do introduce affiliate links later, we’re implementing a standard we set in advance — not retrofitting a justification for a specific partnership we’ve already agreed to.

How we’d evaluate a potential affiliate partner

If we do consider an affiliate relationship in future, the evaluation wouldn’t start with commission rates. It would start with the same question we ask about everything else on this site: would we recommend this to a friend who was job hunting, if there were no money involved at all? Practically, that means looking at things like whether the product or service has a track record of actually helping people, whether its pricing is transparent, whether it makes realistic claims about outcomes rather than promising guaranteed results, and whether it would still make sense as a recommendation if the affiliate commission were removed from the equation entirely. A tool or service that only earns a recommendation because of the commission attached to it isn’t one we’d publish, regardless of how the numbers work out.

The kinds of services this might eventually apply to

If we do introduce affiliate relationships, the categories most likely to be relevant to a UK jobs audience include CV review or CV-writing services, interview coaching, online courses relevant to career changes or upskilling, and possibly UK-specific job-search tools or software. We’re deliberately not naming or endorsing any specific provider in this policy, since we have none to disclose today — this section exists purely to give you a realistic sense of the kind of thing this policy would eventually govern, not a preview of a partnership already underway.