At the end of the day this reviewing business is three things to me: a passion, a hobby and eventually, a job. While others may have the income to supplement their hobbyist ventures, I do not (currently) have this privilege and would rather have my hobby be my income, and so provide content to my readers at a full-time capacity. As opposed to if I were to take on a separate and unrelated full-time (also likely corporate) job, which means measurements and reviews can only be done at my leisure which drastically decreases the rate at which I can create content for my loyal readers.

This ties back to the ethics conversation, wherein my monetisation strategies will heavily influence my biases in future. Currently, my income is diversified into three main components:

General advertising (Google Adsense)

Specialised banner advertising

Patreon

With a fourth component, product collaboration revenue, also on the horizon.

Of the three currently active, the ones that have the least conflict-of-interest would undoubtedly be general advertising and Patreon. In general advertising, I do not manage or control the ads being shown on my website and so is completely unaffected by whether or not my reviews are positive or negative. Patreon is a membership platform that allows my own readers to support me, which is probably the most conflict-of-interest-free way to get money off my content.

The big issue, that many of you have raised, would be in the specialised banner advertising.

As of today (01/02/20) there are three online retailers who pay for specialised banner advertising on my website, namely Headphones.com, Linsoul and HiFiGo. Now, Headphones.com is probably has the least conflict-of-interest out of the three considering that they don’t send me any review units, so the big concern would be Linsoul and HiFiGo who actually provide the majority of my review units (but not the majority of my impressions, that still goes to store demo units by a total landslide). So, consider this as me being completely transparent on my relationship with these two retailers and why I believe it does not affect the integrity of my reviews.

Over the years, I’ve received quite a few review units from many different retailers and manufacturers. As you can tell, I’m not quite “repeat customer” material as my reviews tend to get rather critical and almost scathing at times. Linsoul and HiFiGo were the companies that continue to send me review units despite my numerous negative reviews on previous products, and so I began to trust that they would be acceptable as banner advertisers.

Again I have to stress, the payments that these retailers make to me are purely for banner advertising and nothing else. They have zero say in the content I publish and they have never once asked me to amend or edit any of my reviews of their carried products.

Brands and manufacturers of the products I review will not be accepted as banner advertisers on IEF.