Disclosure
How we make money
Being straight about this is easier than being vague about it.
The overwhelming majority of our income comes from one place: clients paying us to design their websites. That is the business. Everything published on this site exists to help people decide whether to hire a designer, and ideally to hire us.
There is a second, much smaller source. Some of the platforms and tools we mention run affiliate programmes. Where we link to one, we may earn a commission if you sign up. That is described in full below.
Affiliate links
An affiliate link is a normal link that carries a code identifying us as the referrer. If you click it and later buy or subscribe, the company pays us a percentage.
It never costs you more. The commission comes out of the company's margin, not your price. You pay exactly what you would have paid going direct.
We may hold affiliate relationships with website platforms, hosting providers, theme and plugin developers, and freelance marketplaces. [List your active affiliate programmes here once you join any — e.g. Shopify Partners, Bluehost, Webflow.]
Where a page contains affiliate links, that page says so near the top. If you would rather not use them, search for the company directly and go there instead. It makes no difference to us, and none to the advice.
What money does not buy
This is the part that matters.
- No company can pay to be recommended. Not for a mention, not for a ranking, not for a favourable comparison.
- We do not publish paid or sponsored reviews.
- We do not sell guest posts, link placements, or "brand mentions", whatever the offer.
- Commission rates play no part in our recommendations. We routinely recommend Squarespace and WordPress over options that would pay us more, because they are usually the right answer for a small business.
Where a platform we have an affiliate relationship with is the wrong choice for a reader, we say so. Our comparison pages criticise products we could earn from. That is the whole point of publishing them.
Why we recommend against ourselves sometimes
Our guides regularly tell people things that cost us money: that many small businesses do not need a custom-built site, that a template on Squarespace is often enough, that a freelancer may serve them better than an agency, and that they should always get several quotes.
We do this because a reader who is talked into the wrong thing becomes an unhappy client, and unhappy clients are expensive. Advice we would give a friend is also the advice that builds a business worth having.
Client work shown on this site
Projects in our portfolio are real work we were paid to do by the client shown, under the portfolio clause of our terms. Nobody pays to appear there, and nobody is paid to appear there.
Client names and outcomes are published with permission and removed on request at any time. Email contact@hire-web-designer.com.
Reported figures come either from our own measurements or from the client. Individual results vary, as our disclaimer explains.
Advertising
We do not currently run display advertising, sponsored placements, or paid listings on this site. [Update this section if that changes — any sponsored content must be clearly labelled as such.]
If we introduce advertising, sponsored content will be labelled where it appears, not only on this page.
Compliance
Alongside our disclaimer on results, this disclosure is published to comply with the United States Federal Trade Commission's guidance on endorsements and testimonials (16 CFR Part 255), and with UK consumer protection rules on identifying commercial content.
Our approach is simple: if a link could earn us money, we say so, in a place you will actually see it rather than buried in a footer.
Questions
If you want to know whether a specific link or recommendation earns us anything, ask and we will tell you. Email contact@hire-web-designer.com.