Disclosure
How we are paid
Shelf Gift earns a commission when you buy through a link here. This page says exactly how that works, what it does not change, and what we would do if it ever did.
What an affiliate link is
When you click a buy button on this site, you go through our own redirect at /go/ and on to the retailer with a tracking tag attached. If you then buy something, the retailer pays us a percentage of what you spent. It costs you nothing extra — the price is identical to what you would see arriving at that page any other way.
Every one of those links carries rel="sponsored nofollow noopener", which is how Google asks publishers to mark paid links, and opens in a new tab so you do not lose the page you were reading.
What it does not change
- The rank order. Products are ranked on their gift-fit score, which is computed and judged per our published methodology. Commission rate is not one of the five components and never has been.
- What we say to skip. Several products on this site carry an explicit recommendation against, and one of them is a product we could earn a commission on. That is the whole test of whether a disclosure like this one means anything.
- What we include. Pages that carry no buy links at all — the ones on eye health, on book damage, on picking a book — exist because they answer a real question, and attaching a product to them would make the answer worth less.
Where we do not earn, and we say so
Amazon is currently the only retailer on this site that pays us. Some things readers ask about are sold direct by their makers — book subscription boxes in particular — and we are not in an affiliate program with any of them. Where we discuss those, we earn nothing, and the page says so rather than leaving you to wonder.
No brand pays for placement here. No brand has seen a page before it published. No brand has sent us a product, and we have not asked any of them to.
How prices work
Prices on this site come from one place: a live retailer data feed, with a 48-hour freshness limit. If that feed has not run inside the window, no price renders anywhere and every button reads “Check price”.
We do not type prices by hand. Not from memory, not from a screenshot, not from last week. A stale price on a gift guide is the one error a reader acts on without checking, and showing nothing is the honest alternative even though it costs us clicks.
What we do not do with your data
We do not sell anything, so we do not take your payment details, your address or your name unless you send them to us through the contact form. Analytics on this site is Google Analytics 4, used to see which pages get read. Our privacy page covers the detail.
If any of this changes
If we join a second affiliate network, take a sponsorship, or ever accept a product from a brand, this page will say so, on the day it happens, and the pages affected will say so too. The point of a disclosure is that it stays accurate when it is inconvenient.
FTC compliance
This disclosure exists to comply with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, which require a clear and conspicuous statement of any material connection between a publisher and a product it recommends. Ours is the Amazon Associates relationship described above.
In addition to this page, every commercial page on this site carries a disclosure line above its first affiliate link, and every buy button is marked #ad. It is stated three times on purpose.
Questions about any of this are welcome at info@shelfgift.com or through the contact form.