Methodology

The boring but important part. How we verify everything you read on this site — and what we don't know.

Last updated 2026-07-16 · program data last rebuilt 2026-07-16

Every listing is checked by hand against the program's own affiliate page and its network's public terms, and carries the date a human last looked at it. The Program Score is our editorial judgment of the terms on offer — commission, cookie, recurring, network. It is not a measure of whether a program pays on time: we don't have that data, and we don't publish numbers we can't stand behind. Every change we detect to a listing is published at /changes. Paid and affiliate links are disclosed on the page they appear.

Why methodology matters

Affiliate marketing has a credibility problem. Most directories list programs based on whatever the program told them once, then never re check. Most reviews are written by people who never ran the program. Most "rankings" are bought and sold without disclosure. The result is an industry where serious operators don't trust public data and rely on private Telegram groups and Slack channels instead.

The usual response is for a directory to publish an impressive-sounding methodology describing data it doesn't have. That's the same disease with better copy. So this page is written to a harder standard: every claim below is either something you can verify on this site right now, or it's marked as something we don't do yet. If you catch a gap between this page and reality, that's a bug — email us and it gets fixed.

What the Program Score is

Every listing carries a letter grade. Here is exactly what it means:

The Program Score is a human judgment about the quality of the deal being offered to affiliates. It weighs the commission rate, whether it recurs, the cookie window, the tracking network's reputation, and how recently we verified all of that. It is assigned by an editor reading the program's terms — not calculated by a formula, and not derived from payout data.

What it is not

It is not a payout-reliability score. We do not currently have verified payout timing data for these programs. A high score does not mean a program pays on time — it means the terms are good on paper.
It is not a statistical measure. There is no sample size behind it, because there is no sample. Any directory quoting you an n for a payout score should be able to show you the receipts.
It is not for sale. Claiming a listing, buying featured placement, or being a program we earn a commission from does not change a score. See the disclosure section below, where we name the ones we profit from.

The scale we actually use

Four grades, across 159 graded programs:

Grade	What it means	Programs
A	Best-in-class terms — strong commission, usually recurring, long cookie, reputable network	39
B+	Strong terms with one weak spot (shorter cookie, one-time payout, smaller rate)	36
B	Solid, unremarkable terms — the industry middle	48
C	Weak terms — low rate, short cookie, or a network we'd watch carefully	36
Ungraded	Listed but not yet reviewed by an editor	1

Why there are no D or F grades

A D or an F on a payout scale is an accusation: it says a company takes affiliates' work and doesn't pay for it. That is a serious claim about a real business, and making it requires evidence we don't have. So we don't make it. The floor is C, and C means "the terms are weak," not "they won't pay you."

The honest consequence: the score can tell you a deal is good, but it cannot warn you that a program is dangerous. Until that changes, treat it as a filter for terms, not a safety rating. Cross-check payout behaviour on AffiliateFix, AffLIFT, or r/Affiliatemarketing before you send real traffic.

How a listing gets verified

Step 1. Read the official affiliate page

The program's actual affiliate page on the company's own website — not a third-party review. We record the headline commission, recurring vs one-time, cookie length, and two-tier availability, plus payout method, schedule, and minimum threshold where the program publishes them.

Step 2. Read the network terms

If the program runs on Impact, PartnerStack, ShareASale, CJ Affiliate, Awin, Rakuten, ClickBank, MaxBounty or similar, we check the program's listing on that network against its marketing page — the two disagree more often than you'd think, and the network is usually right. We note clauses on brand bidding, allowed traffic, and refund clawback windows.

Step 3. Record it, with the date

The data goes into our database and every listing gets stamped with the date a human last checked it. That date is on the program page. It is never backdated, and it only moves when someone actually re-checks — which means a stale date is visible to you rather than hidden from you.

Step 4. Rebuild and publish

The site rebuilds every page as static HTML from that database, so what you read is what was recorded. Schema markup and the sitemap regenerate automatically.

Step 5. Snapshot and diff

After each rebuild we snapshot every tracked field and diff it against the previous snapshot. Anything that moved — a commission cut, a cookie shortened, a program pulled — is published at /changes with the direction of the change marked. This runs automatically, so a program quietly worsening its terms is on the public record whether or not anyone noticed by hand.

What we don't do yet

The gap between this list and the section above is the honest state of the directory. These are things a mature version of this site should do, and doesn't:

We don't collect payout receipts. There is no intake for affiliates to submit proof of payment, so no score here reflects payout timing.
We don't run test accounts on the networks. We aren't verifying payment timing first-hand.
We don't have community reviews yet. The review form is live on every program page and no one has used it, because the directory is new. Zero reviews is shown as zero — not padded with anything.
We don't write a long editorial review for every program. 6 of 160 have one. The rest carry verified specs and no prose, rather than filler.

How two-tier availability is verified

Two-tier and sub-affiliate programs are worth verifying carefully because the term gets misused. Some programs market a "refer a friend" credit as second tier (it isn't). Some are MLM with multiple levels. Our criteria for the two-tier tag:

Public affiliate terms explicitly describe a two-tier or sub-affiliate structure with a stated percentage
The structure is exactly two levels. Three or more is MLM, not affiliate, and we don't list those
Tier 2 pays a percentage of the referred affiliate's actual commissions — not a flat bounty for signing them up
The relationship is tracked automatically by the platform, with no manual reconciliation required

Programs that fail any of these don't get the tag, even if they market themselves as having one. Note that these criteria are about the documented structure: we verify that tier 2 exists and is tracked, not that a given program actually paid a tier-2 commission last month.

How we handle submissions

Submit a program at /submit. Every submission is checked against the program's real affiliate page before it goes live — including submissions from program owners, whose data we verify independently rather than take on trust. Marketing language is stripped. Rejected submissions get a written reason; the common ones are a closed program, terms we can't verify publicly, or an excluded category (adult, unregulated crypto, predatory lending).

Newly approved programs are listed ungraded until an editor reviews the terms. A program is never given a score just to fill the column.

Claiming a listing

Program owners can claim their listing from any program page. Claiming requires clicking a link sent to an address at the program's own domain — a free mailbox can't prove ownership, so it isn't accepted. A verified claim lets an owner send corrections and earns a "Claimed" mark and a free badge.

Claiming never changes a score, and there is no code path in this site that would let it. That rule is the only reason the badge is worth anything.

How we handle errors

We make mistakes. Programs change terms without announcing them. Sometimes we type the wrong number.

Email [email protected] with the URL and the specific issue. Documentation helps but isn't required. Verified errors get fixed and the page shows a new "last verified" date — and because every field is snapshotted and diffed, the correction shows up at /changes like any other change. We don't quietly fix errors hoping nobody notices; the changelog makes quiet fixes impossible by design.

Money, and who we profit from

Being straight about this is part of the methodology, not a footnote to it.

6 of 160 listings earn us a commission. Their Join buttons carry our referral link, tagged rel="sponsored". Every other listing sends you straight to the program and earns us nothing.
Two listed programs are ours. FreeTTS and FreeCV are owned by the person who runs this directory. That's disclosed on both program pages, and they're graded on the same scale as everything else — neither is an A.
Nobody has bought featured placement. We offer it, and so far no program has paid for it — so there are zero featured listings right now, and nothing on the site is ordered or promoted because someone paid. When a placement is sold it will carry a visible FEATURED label wherever it appears, and it will never buy a Program Score.
There is no separate editorial department. This is a small operation: the person who assigns the scores is the person who benefits from the affiliate links. We can't offer you separation of duties, so we offer disclosure and a public changelog instead — you can check our scoring against our incentives, on this site, right now.

What we deliberately don't do

We don't auto-fetch program pages with scrapers. Manual review catches what scrapers miss — footnotes, restrictions, network changes.
We don't publish program-owner copy as editorial. Press-release language doesn't appear in a writeup.
We don't backdate verifications. The "last verified" date is the real date a human re-checked it.
We don't list programs we can't verify. If the terms are behind a signup wall we can't reach, it doesn't get listed.
We don't accept payment to remove a bad review or raise a score.
We don't invent numbers. No aggregate ratings without reviews, no sample sizes without samples, no grades without a person having read the terms.

FAQ about methodology

Does an A mean the program pays on time?

No. It means the terms are best-in-class on paper — strong commission, usually recurring, long cookie, reputable network. We don't currently have verified payout data for any program on this site, so no grade here can tell you about payment behaviour. Check AffiliateFix, AffLIFT or r/Affiliatemarketing before committing real traffic to a program you don't know.

How often is each program re verified?

The target is every 30 to 60 days, and every listing shows the date it was actually last checked — so you can see for yourself whether we hit that target rather than take our word for it. Major events like a program closure or a term change trigger an immediate re-check, and any change we detect is published at /changes.

I think a Program Score is wrong. What now?

Email [email protected] with the program name and your reasoning. Since the score is an editorial judgment about terms rather than a calculation, a good argument about the terms is exactly the right way to challenge it. You'll get either an updated score or a written explanation of why it stands.

Why don't you list every affiliate program?

Quality over breadth. There are 100,000+ affiliate programs in the world and most are noise. Our 160 are the ones worth knowing about across our covered categories. Pure CPA offers go to OfferVault. Adult and unregulated crypto go to specialist directories. We focus on programs with verifiable terms and real products.

How do I know money isn't buying a better score?

Nobody has bought placement here yet, so there's nothing to buy it with. What does exist is our affiliate revenue: 6 of 160 listings earn us a commission, and they're named in the disclosure section above. Compare their grades to the rest of the directory — two of them are programs we own outright, and neither is an A. You don't have to trust the claim; the data is on the site and every change to it is at /changes.

Why publish the gaps in your own methodology?

Because a methodology page that only lists strengths is marketing, and this industry has plenty of that. The useful question isn't whether a directory sounds rigorous — it's whether it tells you what it doesn't know. Ours is above, under "What we don't do yet."