The Short Version
ToolsMaestro.com 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.
This page explains what that means in practice, what it costs you, and how it affects what you read on this site.
How Affiliate Links Work
Many of the product links on this site are affiliate links. When you click one and go through to a retailer, a tracking identifier travels with you. If you then buy something within the retailer’s tracking window, we receive a small advertising fee from that retailer.
A few points worth knowing:
- You pay nothing extra. The price you see is the same price you would pay arriving at the retailer any other way. The fee comes out of the retailer’s margin, not your pocket.
- The tracking window on Amazon is short. In most cases the cookie lasts 24 hours from your click, or longer if you add an item to your cart during that visit.
- Qualifying purchases can include items you buy in that window that we never wrote about, because the tracking applies to the session rather than to a single item.
- Not every purchase qualifies. Some categories are excluded by the retailer’s own program rules, and returns and cancellations reverse the fee.
Which Links Are Affiliate Links
Assume that any outbound link to a retailer on this site may be an affiliate link. That includes links inside product write-ups, buttons, comparison tables, category rankings, product images, and text links inside guides. Links to manufacturer documentation, standards bodies, safety regulators, and news sources are not affiliate links and earn us nothing.
How This Affects Our Rankings
It does not change the order of them. Our rankings are computed from published product specifications and demand data, using the same scoring rules for every model inside a category. No brand, retailer, or advertiser pays for placement, for a higher position, for particular wording, or for the removal of an unflattering note.
To be equally plain about our limits: there is no hands-on testing behind these rankings. We do not operate a lab or a workshop, and we do not accept review samples. Our methodology is described in more detail on the About page.
Commission rates do vary between product categories, which is a real conflict of interest and worth naming rather than pretending away. We do not weight scores by commission rate, and category coverage is driven by reader demand rather than by which categories pay best.
Prices and Availability
Prices, specifications, shipping terms, and stock levels shown on this site are drawn from the retailer at the time a page is generated, and they change constantly. The figure displayed on the retailer’s own page at the moment of checkout is the one that applies. We are not able to honor a price shown here, and we are not responsible for retailer pricing errors, stock outages, or delivery problems.
Your Purchase Is With the Retailer
We do not sell anything. We hold no inventory, process no payments, and ship nothing. Your order, your payment details, your warranty, your returns, and your customer service are entirely between you and the retailer you buy from. Their terms and their privacy policy govern that transaction, not ours.
Other Commercial Relationships
Beyond retailer affiliate programs, we may earn revenue from display advertising served on this site. Advertisers have no input into editorial content, rankings, or the scoring rules behind them. If we ever publish sponsored content, it will be labelled as sponsored at the top of the page.
Why We Tell You This
Partly because the Federal Trade Commission’s Endorsement Guides require material connections to be disclosed clearly and conspicuously, and partly because you should be able to judge our incentives for yourself. Affiliate revenue is what pays for the research behind this site. We would rather you knew that than found it out later.
Questions
If anything here is unclear, or you think a link is not properly disclosed, write to [email protected] and we will fix it.
Last reviewed: August 2026.