How We Make Money

Coal & Charis free to read, and it stays that way because some of the links on this site are affiliate links. This page explains exactly what that means for you, in plain English, so nothing about how we’re funded is hidden behind a footer.

How affiliate links work

When we point you to a product, some of those links are affiliate links. If you click one and then buy something, we may earn a small commission. That commission is paid by the retailer, not by you— the price is exactly the same whether you use our link or type the product name into the store yourself. There is no markup, no surcharge, and no code you have to enter. It costs you nothing extra, and it is what keeps the site running without a paywall.

Our Amazon Associates disclosure

Coal & Char is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Our Associates tag is t5bbq-20, and it is appended to the Amazon links we use so that qualifying purchases are credited to us. Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.

Prices and availability change

Any price or availability you see next to a product is pulled from live retailer data and is accurate only as of the moment it was fetched, which we stamp with a date. Prices move constantly, so by the time you click, a number may have changed. The retailer’s own listing is always the final word on price and stock — not us. More on how we handle price freshness is on our how we pick page.

Commission never changes a ranking

This is the rule the whole site rests on: a commission never decides which product we recommend, or in what order. Our reasoning is identical whether a link earns us money or nothing at all. We are not paid to place a product, we do not accept payment for a higher spot on a list, and no brand can buy its way into a recommendation.

Because of that, we will happily send you to the cheaper option when it is genuinely the better buy — even when a pricier grill would earn us a larger commission. We also tell you plainly what to skip, which is not something a site optimizing purely for commissions would ever do.

How the links are marked

Where appropriate, affiliate and sponsored-style links are marked with #ad and carry a rel="sponsored" attribute, which is the standard way of disclosing a paid relationship to both readers and search engines. Product links may also route through a simple internal redirect before reaching the retailer; that just lets us keep links tidy and swap a broken one quickly — it does not add any cost or change where you end up.

Questions

If anything here is unclear, or you want to know whether a specific link is an affiliate link, ask us on the contact page. For the standards that govern our accuracy and corrections, see our editorial policy.