Did you know that if you end up subscribing to an online learning platform or buying a financial product that we review, you will be helping us?
Let me explain in more detail.
When we launched upskillwise.com we decided not to have adverts or pop-ups on our website and that was for several reasons.
- They can be quite annoying and intrusive to the reader of the post or article.
- Advertisers would want you to speak well of them, which would give us less editorial freedom.
- We didn’t want the reputation of upskillwise.com to be dictated by the advertiser.
But this may lead you to ask the question: ‘How is our project financed?’ Well, the simple answer is our site uses referral marketing to fund the website.
The next obvious question is: ‘What is referral marketing?’
What is referral marketing?
It is simpler than it seems, if you do decide to subscribe to a membership or buy a course or financial product that we review at upskillwise.com, we may be compensated with a commission.
This does not incur any extra cost to you, actually many times we are able to negotiate better terms for our readers (e.g. a discounted rate on a yearly membership).
Transparency and Editorial line
One of the biggest issues with referral marketing (also called affiliate) is that there can be a conflict of interest. For example other websites similar to upskillwise.com, speak highly of the products that bring them the most income.
For this reason, at upskillwise.com we make an extra effort so that the $ does not cloud judgement and we do not recommend ANYTHING that we wouldn’t recommend to a friend or loved one.
We believe so strongly in this and that’s why we publish and regularly update our articles and rankings of our partners. So our readers can be rest assured that our partners are trustworthy. Here is the list of partners we are currently working with:
- Coursera
- MasterClass
- Udacity
- Skillshare
- Datacamp
- Udemy
- edX
- LinkedIn Learning
- Pluralsight
- Brilliant
- Codecademy
- CreativeLive
- Mindvalley
- LastPass
- 1Password
- Keepersecurity
- NordPass
- Bitwarden
- Zoho
- Password Boss
- LogMeOnce
- RememBear
- Degiro
- eToro
- XTB
- AvaTrade
- Plus500
- IQ Option
Why should you trust us?
The most simple answer is because we are explaining all of this with you and being transparent about it. When you look at 90% of websites on the internet they don’t explain all of this to you.
In addition, we have developed a code of conduct and a methodology when we create our content and reviews on analysing products.
- We always create the content and review it ourselves
- We are very transparent with affiliate links, including a declaration on each review page.
- During our research period we use primary sources which we check before publishing and of course if you find any mistakes, please let us know
- Any reader is welcome to leave a comment, as long as it’s respectful of others, the authors of the content and the platforms being discussed.
- We don’t accept financial gains or gifts from the platforms we review.
- We don’t give the services we review access to the content we create before we post it
- In all content, we publish we are transparent and disclose if we receive commissions through a clear message
- We always talk in our reviews about the ‘pros’ and the ‘cons’ of each service
- Everyone one of our reviews has a real author, and we do no hide behind pseudonyms
I hope this page has helped you understand more about how we are financed and why you can trust our content.
Likewise, if you have any questions about how we evaluate the products and platforms on our site, you can take a look at the methodology.
And if you want to know more about the team behind upskillwise.com, you can read about us here.
Thanks,
Catherine & Josep
Article Updates:
29/06/22 – Upskillwise Partners and Transparency Added