Affiliate disclosure
How this site makes money, stated in full — and specifically what that money does not buy.
Last updated October 5, 2026
The short answer
Garage & Workbench is funded by affiliate commission. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases: if you buy through a link on this site, we may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Commission never influences which products we pick, how we rank them, or what we say about them.
The required statement
That statement is Amazon's required language. Everything below is ours, and it is the part that actually matters.
What this means in practice
- You pay nothing extra. The price is the same whether you arrive at Amazon through a link here or type the address yourself. The commission comes out of the retailer's margin.
- Not every link earns. Some links on this site are plain references with no commission attached, and some purchases do not qualify.
- Links are tagged and routed. Product links pass through a redirect on this domain before reaching the retailer, which is how the referral is attributed and how we can measure which recommendations people act on.
- It is disclosed before the link, not after. A disclosure line sits above the first affiliate link on every page that carries one — not only on this page.
What commission does not buy
This is the part worth being specific about, because "commission does not affect our picks" is said by everyone and demonstrated by very few.
| Commission does not buy | Evidence you can check |
|---|---|
| A rank | Several top picks here are the cheapest item in their category, which pays the least commission |
| Placement | No manufacturer has paid to appear on this site. There are no sponsored pages and no paid reviews |
| A pre-publication look | No brand sees a page before it publishes |
| Softer criticism | Every recommended product carries a cons list, including the winners. Several name a missing specification as the con |
| A fabricated endorsement | There are no testimonials, reviews, quotes or star ratings anywhere on this site, because we hold no review data of our own |
Our methodology lists the criteria each category is judged on, fixed before any product is examined. The editorial policy covers accountability and corrections.
Which retailers we work with
Amazon only, at launch. That is the honest answer: it is the one program this site is approved for, so it is the only one used. If that changes, this page changes with it, and any new program will be named here before any link to it goes live.
Some pages link to a manufacturer's own site for a specification or a manual. Those are evidence links, carry no commission, and exist so you can check a figure against its source.
Prices
Prices on this site are fetched live and rendered when the page loads — never typed into the content. Where no live price is available the page shows "Check price on Amazon" rather than a stale figure.
Amazon prices change frequently, sometimes several times a day, so the price you see at checkout is the one that counts. On the build-list pages the running total excludes anything without a live price rather than estimating it, which means a total is always an understatement of the full build.
Analytics
We record when an affiliate link is clicked, in aggregate, so we can see which recommendations readers act on. That is counting, not identifying — see our privacy policy for what is and is not collected.
Questions
Garage & Workbench is published by Iron Mako Media. If anything here is unclear, or you think a pick looks commission-driven, say so: contact@garageandworkbench.com. We would rather answer that question than have it go unasked.