bufordt wrote:
efernand wrote:
It's a tough business.
Can he really afford to retail purchase all the latest Garmin, Polar, FitBit, Suunto, etc., releases to give a nice broad review?
If he's at least somewhat dependent on getting free, or loaner, or pre-production devices from manufacturers, he can't be totally brutal in his reviews.
If one manufacturer starts giving him higher affiliate $, does that affect his reviews, even subconsciously? A cautionary tale, from the world of mattress reviews of all things. It's my understanding that he doesn't take advertisement from product manufacturers.
This is the quote from the Outside article.
Quote:
and vice versa; he accepts no advertising from the companies he covers
I don't take any money (advertising or otherwise) from any companies I review. In fact, I don't take any money/trips/etc from any manufactures. Even speeches/etc are all free (in the case of the ANT+ Symposium, I specifically have them donate my 'speaking fee' to a Canadian kids sports organization - KidSport). And in the case of airfare, like when I give the keynote next month at the Garmin Connect Summit - I'm paying my own expenses too. My income streams are super simplified*.
Ads come purely from Google AdSense (I've tried other avenues, they all suck), and are based on whatever you were searching for. Search for women's underwear, you'll get women's underwear ads. Drug/gambling ads are blocked, as is a separate manual blacklist of URL's of all companies I review or might review.
Certainly, one can argue the pros and cons of any business model. But I think it's pretty reasonable and quite a bit more than most publishers can say. To each their own.
*Simple version of income: Amazon, Clever Training, REI, Google AdSense, magazines I write gear articles for, and Wall Street firms that want investment advice but are too lazy to read what I already wrote online. Actually, I think that's everything.
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My tiny little slice of the internets:
dcrainmaker.com