Affiliate disclosure

Some links on PCOSguides earn a commission if you buy through them. You pay the same price you would pay going direct — the commission comes out of the seller's margin, not your pocket. Every such link is labelled beside the link itself, not only on this page. Commission never decides a ranking, and no supplement here is ever placed above a prescribed medication.

Where this stands today

No article on this site carries an affiliate link yet. Theproduct comparison section is still being written, and this page is published ahead of the first link so the rule exists before the money does. Writing the policy after the first cheque is how the policy ends up shaped by it.

When the first link goes live, nothing on this page changes except the tense.

What an affiliate link is

An affiliate link is an ordinary link with a tracking code attached. If you click it and buy something, the seller pays this site a percentage of the sale — usually somewhere between a few percent and a fifth of the price, set by the seller and not negotiable per article.

• It costs you nothing. The price is identical whether you use the link, type the address yourself, or buy the same thing in a shop. There is no surcharge and no worse deal.
• It does not track you around the internet for us. The tracking exists so the seller knows which sale to attribute. What this site does and does not collect is set out inthe privacy notice.
• You never have to use it. Every product is named in plain text as well as linked, so you can search for it yourself and buy it wherever you like. That is a real option, not a technicality.

The disclosure sits at the link, not only here

A disclosure buried on a policy page is not a disclosure. The FTC's position is that it has to be where the decision is made, and the decision is made at the link — on a phone, mid-article, with a thumb hovering over it. So the label travels with the link.

Three rules govern that label:

• It appears before the click, not after it. Never below the fold of the link, never behind a tooltip, never in a colour that fades into the page.
• It is in plain words. Not "partner", not "we may be compensated", not an asterisk. If a reader has to work out what the sentence means, it has not disclosed anything.
• It appears on every one. Including in emails, including inside a paid guide, including in a comparison table where four of the six rows are affiliate links and two are not.

This page exists as the long version — the reasoning, the rules, the things we will not do. It is not the mechanism. If you ever find a commissioned link here without a label on it, that is a defect, and the last section of this page is how to report it.

What the commission does not buy

The reason to trust a recommendation is the reasoning behind it, so here is where each decision actually gets made.

Commission rates are not visible anywhere in the writing process for a reason: the comparison is built from the ingredient panels and the literature first, and the links are added at the end, to whatever came out on top.

A supplement is never placed above a prescription

This is the rule that matters most on a site about a condition people are prescribed medication for, and it is not negotiable at any commission rate.

• No page here will tell you a supplement is a replacement for a medicine you have been prescribed, or suggest you stop, reduce or delay one in favour of something bought over the counter.
• No page will frame a prescription as the inferior, unnatural or last-resort option. That framing sells supplements, and it is the reason a lot of PCOS content cannot be trusted.
• Supplement pages give the studied dose, the study it came from, the interactions, and the people who should skip it entirely — before anything is linked. The exclusions come before the buy button, not after it.
• A supplement is a substance with effects, including effects on the prescriptions you already take. That belongs in a conversation with your prescriber and your pharmacist, not in a checkout.

We will say when something is not worth buying

A comparison where every product is worth buying is a comparison written by the commission. So the verdicts here include the unprofitable ones:

• "Buy nothing." Sometimes the honest answer to a supplement question is that the evidence does not support spending the money. That answer gets published, and it earns exactly nothing.
• "Buy the cheap one." Where an own-brand tub and a branded one contain the same compound at the same dose, the page says so and links the cheaper one — which is usually the one paying the smaller commission, or none.
• "This popular product is not what it looks like." Proprietary blends that hide doses, a well-marketed formula that is under-dosed against what the trials used, a "PCOS" label on an ordinary multivitamin at three times the price — named, with the numbers.
• "This one is not for you." Every recommendation names who should skip it — the phenotype it does not suit, the medication it interacts with, the person it is unsafe for.

Popularity is not evidence, and a product being widely bought is not a reason to be gentle about it. The whole value of a comparison is that it can say no.

What is refused outright

• Sponsored articles. No brand has paid for an article, a mention, a placement or a ranking on this site, and none will. There is no rate card to ask for.
• Paid links. Links are not bought, sold or exchanged, in either direction.
• Any deal that includes the verdict. An arrangement where a favourable review is part of the terms is declined, however it is worded.
• Takedown requests over a bad verdict. Send evidence and it gets read properly. Send a demand and the page stays as it is.
• Anything that would need a reader to be misled to work. That is the whole test, and it is a shorter list than it looks.

If a brand ever sends a product for testing, that is a material connection too, and it will be disclosed on the page in the same plain words — including when the tested product loses.

The rule this follows

The FTC's Endorsement Guides (16 CFR Part 255) require anyone recommending a product to disclose a material connection — a commission, a free sample, a business relationship — clearly and conspicuously, close to the recommendation, in language an ordinary reader understands.The FTC's own guidance is short, readable and worth ten minutes if you write online yourself.

Treat that as the floor rather than the target. The label at the link goes further than the minimum because the point is not to satisfy a regulator; it is that you should be able to weigh a recommendation knowing exactly how the person making it gets paid.

How this site is funded, in full

PCOSguides is independent and published by one person. There is no investor, no parent company and no supplement brand behind it. Four revenue sources are possible here, and you should know all four:

• Products this site makes and sells itself — guides and plans, sold underthe terms, refundable for 30 days. Nothing is on sale yet.
• Affiliate commission on products this site already recommends on the evidence. Covered by this page.
• Display advertising — none runs on this site today. If it ever does it will be labelled as advertising and it will not be placed inside a comparison table or beside a dose.
• Nothing else. No sponsorship, no paid placement, no data sold to anyone, ever. Your email address is not a product.

How articles are researched, sourced and corrected is atEditorial policy, and Sarah's background — including what she does not claim — is at About.

If we get this wrong

An unlabelled commissioned link, a comparison that reads like an advert, a verdict that does not match the evidence underneath it — send it tosupport@pcosguides.com with the page address and the sentence that bothered you.

It gets fixed on the page and, where the meaning changed, logged atCorrections with a dated note saying what it used to say. A disclosure policy nobody can hold you to is a marketing document, and this one is meant to be checkable.