How We Make Money
Plain-English affiliate disclosure. We earn a commission when you buy through our links, at no extra cost to you — and it never decides which product we recommend.
The short version
Clay & Coat is free to read because some of the links to products are affiliate links. If you click one and buy, we may earn a small commission, and you pay exactly the same price— the commission comes out of the retailer’s margin, not your pocket. That’s the entire business model. We take nothing from the brands whose products we feature.
Amazon Associates
Clay & Coat is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Our Associates tag is clayandcoat-20. When you click a “View on Amazon” or “Check price” button, you go to Amazon through a tracked link, and if you buy within Amazon’s cookie window we earn a percentage of the sale.
Commission never decides a pick
This is the important one. The reasoning behind every recommendation is identical whether a link earns us anything or not. We rank on published specs, coverage, cost-per-use and buyer fit — and when a cheaper product beats a more expensive one for you, the cheaper one is our pick, even though it earns us less. We also publish an honest “skip this”pick where a popular product isn’t worth the money, which is not something a commission-first site would do. See how we review for the full method.
Prices are live, not marketing
Every price you see is pulled from a live feed and stamped with the date it was pulled. We don’t store prices, so we can’t show you a stale “was $X” number to manufacture urgency. If a live price isn’t available, the button simply says “Check price on Amazon.” There are no fake countdowns, no invented scarcity, and no “lowest price ever” claims anywhere on this site.
Other retailers and programs
Right now, essentially every buy link on the site goes to Amazon. If we ever add a link to a brand’s own store or another retailer because it’s genuinely a better deal for you, we’ll route it the same transparent way, and we’ll only earn a commission on programs we’ve actually joined. We never wire tracking to a program we haven’t joined, and we never present a non-earning link as if it earned us something.
Questions
If anything here is unclear, or you think a recommendation looks commission-driven, tell us. We’d genuinely rather explain our reasoning than leave you wondering.