How We Fund Project Caffeinate

The ways in which we support the site and what that means for you.

We hope that you are loving the information and content we’re providing on this website. It is truly from the heart and this subject is something we are deeply passionate about and have been for decades. There is so much out there in the world of coffee and tea that we want to share with you and learn about for ourselves.

To do that, however, we have to find a way to finance this operation. While it’s somewhat of a standard within this industry to downplay the ways in which you make money off of a website and its content, it is extremely important to us that we are transparent about it. We think that the ways in which we can generate enough revenue to power content that helps the coffee community grow and learn don’t interfere with our goal of providing useful, trustworthy content — and arguably even work towards it. Let us explain.

How Project Caffeinate Makes Money

Over time, you’ll probably see this section change and we’ll be sure to let you know when it does. But here are the ways we’re bringing in money to help us finance our content.

Ads

You’ll start to see ads in different parts of the site at some point. This could include things like banners from partners or automatically-generated ads from search engines like Google and Bing. But whatever they are, we’ll be sure they’re clearly labeled as such.

Sponsored Content

At times, we may also include sponsored “advertorial” content from brand partners. This could look like articles or videos that feature a brand prominently and highlights key selling points. Like visual advertisements, these will be clearly labeled to prevent any confusion.

We also want to go a few steps further to maintain strict boundaries between our opinions and what advertisers pay us to promote. So here are a few things you’ll always be able to count on:

• We will never make a recommendation for a product that we don’t stand behind. Our advertorials will feature our brand partners and paint them in a positive light and feature their highlights, but we’ll hold recommendations for other content.
• Our brand partnerships will never influence our opinion of other brands, even their competition.
• We’ll never work with brands we don’t feel align with our values. If that ever seems to be the case, please bring it to our attention. We have no issue dropping bad actors even if it impacts our finances.
• Brand sponsorships will not impact where companies or products land on our best of or round-up lists. Companies can pay us for advertorial placement, but not for placement on our reviews and recommendations.
• Sponsored content will be a small fraction of the content you see on this site, and will always be clearly labeled as sponsored content.

Affiliate Marketing

This is where things can get a little sticky. Affiliate marketing can be a dirty game that can seem even dirtier if you’re not familiar with how things can work. We’ve got an in-depth look at how content marketing works if you’d like to learn more, but here are the basics.

When you read our reviews, they’ll include links to purchase the items mentioned in the article. If you follow a link and make a purchase, we get a small commission based on a percentage of the price. In many cases, the companies that make these products are completely unaware of our involvement and we are paid by a third party. In some cases, however, we may have a direct relationship with a company.

But no matter what the model is, we are firmly committed to 100% editorial control  — meaning our team are the only ones who have any say in how we rate or review things. The great thing about this model is that we get paid for anything you buy through one of our links. That means that we don’t really have much incentive to promote one product over another in the same category. Ultimately, what will keep us successful in this space is what will allow you to trust our reviews: a thorough commitment to honest assessments of coffee and tea products that help you make the best decisions for your needs and preferences.

Here are a few things we want you to know before using our reviews to help you shop:

• Any and all affiliate content will be clearly labeled as such.
• The content of our reviews is based solely on our experience with a brand or product and is not influenced by our relationship with any company. In other words, you can trust that our opinions on products we review are 100% our own.
• The range of products we review may be influenced by our ability to create affiliate links to those products, meaning you may not see some brands on this site because they don’t participate in affiliate programs.
• We may collect your demographic information to help us shape our content strategy, but we will NEVER sell your information or even share it with anyone else.

Our Promise To You

We use the income our site generates to power content that helps spread the knowledge of coffee and tea beyond its traditional industry walls. That means we’ll be making money off of some of the content on this site. We will always let you know when that’s the case.

We hope that our reviews can help folks like you find the right products for their own needs and preferences, but you can always choose not to interact with this content if you don’t want to. That’s ok with us. Even if you never go anywhere near our product reviews, all the other information on this site is still yours to use and share as much as you’d like. To be honest, that’s the content we care about more anyway.

We need to make money to keep this thing going and growing. But that need to generate revenue will never get in the way of us producing reviews and content that you can trust is 100% honest. And we’re happy to ask our community to help keep us honest. If you see something that goes against this promise, please let us know.