How We Make Money

Last updated: August 2026

Surf & Soul is free to read. No paywall, no subscription, no "three free articles left this month." We'd like it to stay that way, and that means the site has to pay for itself somehow. Here's how it does.

The two ways we earn

Affiliate commissions. When we recommend a product or service and you buy (or request a quote, or sign up) through one of our links, the company pays us a commission. You pay the same price either way — the commission comes out of their marketing budget, not your pocket.

Labeled advertorials. Some articles exist specifically to feature a product we have a paid relationship with. Every one of those carries a clear ADVERTORIAL label at the top. You will never have to guess.

That's the whole model. The nuts and bolts — what counts as an affiliate link, what compensation does and doesn't buy — live on our Affiliate Disclosure page.

How our "Picks" guides work

You'll see guides on this site like "The Best Gutter Guards of 2026, Honestly Compared." Since money is involved in some of those recommendations, here's exactly how they're built:

Every superlative is earned by a stated reason. If we call something "Best for heavy rain" or "Best on a budget," the guide tells you why, and that reason comes from our actual comparison — not from who's paying us. No pick gets its superlative for being a partner.

Partner links are labeled. When a pick has a button, it carries a small label that says "Partner" — meaning we may earn a commission if you use it. No label, no partnership.

Some picks have no button at all — and that's on purpose. If we think a product belongs in the guide but we have no business relationship with the company, it appears anyway, with the same honest assessment and no link to click. We'd rather show you the full picture than only the parts we get paid for.

Where money does — and doesn't — have a say

We'll be straight with you: compensation influences which categories we cover. We generally write guides in areas where we can earn something, because that's what keeps the lights on. A guide about gutter guards exists partly because gutter-guard companies pay commissions.

But within a guide, money has no vote. Rankings, superlatives, pros and cons, and "who should skip this" advice come from the comparison itself. A partner can end up ranked below a company that pays us nothing. That has to be possible, or none of this is worth reading.

The rules we hold ourselves to

Sponsored content is always labeled as sponsored.
Claims stay within what a company's own substantiated materials support — no invented results, no manufactured urgency.
Unpartnered picks appear alongside partnered ones, judged the same way.

The full version of these commitments is in our Editorial Standards, and the fine-grained detail on affiliate relationships is in our Affiliate Disclosure.

Questions?

If anything here is unclear — or a page ever seems like it wasn't labeled the way it should be — email hello@surfandsoul.co and we'll look into it.

Surf & Soul is a publication of Brand Rebel Media, Inc., a Florida corporation.