Affiliate Disclosure

The short version

Block & Beaker earns a commission when you buy something through a link on this site. It costs you nothing extra. It does not change which product we recommend or where it ranks.

Amazon Associates

Block & Beaker 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 Amazon tracking tag is fafblockandbeaker-20. It is appended to outbound Amazon links by the redirect at /go/amazon, which is why buy links on this site pass through our own domain before reaching the retailer. That redirect exists so we can measure clicks and so a merchant can be changed without rewriting content; it collects nothing about you beyond the click itself.

Which programs we are not part of

Worth stating, because most disclosures list only what a site has joined and leave the impression that everything else is covered.

• CJ Affiliate: no advertisers joined. We build no CJ tracking links.
• Awin: no programs joined. We build no Awin tracking links.
• Direct brand programs: none. We have no arrangement with Magna-Tiles, Connetix, Elenco, Thames & Kosmos, KiwiCo, Learning Resources, Ravensburger, Sphero, Makeblock or any other manufacturer named on this site.

Where a page links to a manufacturer’s own site — and it does, constantly, because that is where the specifications come from — those are ordinary reference links. We earn nothing from them.

Where disclosure appears

Above the first affiliate link on every page that has one, not only in the footer. Every buy button also carries an ad marker and a link back to this page, including the buttons where no live price is available — the obligation is created by the link rather than by the presence of a number.

Every outbound commercial link carries rel="sponsored nofollow noopener", which is what Google’s link spam policy asks for and is the machine-readable version of the same disclosure.

What commission does and does not affect

Does not affect: which products appear, what order they rank in, what we say about them, or which one we tell you to skip. Every roundup on this site names something to skip, and we do not put a buy button on it.

Does affect: which retailers we link to. Almost everything here goes to Amazon, because Amazon carries this entire category in depth and because it is the only network we have joined. Where a manufacturer sells direct and Amazon does not stock a product, we link to the manufacturer as a plain reference link and earn nothing.

If we ever join another network, the merchant configuration changes and the content does not. That is deliberate, and it is the reason every buy link routes through /go rather than being hardcoded into a page.

Prices

Prices on this site come from a live data layer and are date-stamped where they appear. When that data is older than 48 hours it stops rendering and the page shows “check price” instead.

The price you see at the retailer is the price you pay; the commission comes out of the retailer’s margin rather than out of your purchase. We do not describe anything as a deal or a discount, because we cannot verify that.

What we do not do

• Accept payment for placement or for a ranking position
• Accept free products from manufacturers
• Publish sponsored content or advertorial
• Build tracking links for networks we have not joined
• Claim to have tested products we have not used

Questions

Email info@blockandbeaker.com. If something on this site looks like it was influenced by a commercial relationship, tell us and we will explain it or fix it. The rules the picks are made under are on the editorial policy page, and the method is on how we pick.