Affiliate Disclosure

The short version

Steel & Sole is reader-supported. Product links on this site go to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. It costs you nothing extra, and it does not change which boots we recommend or the order they appear in.

How the links work

When you click a product link on this site, you pass through a redirect on our own domain — a URL beginning /go/ — which adds our Amazon Associates tracking tag and sends you on to Amazon. The tag is mmg-steelsole-20.

That redirect exists so the tag is applied in exactly one place in our code rather than being copied across hundreds of pages, where it would drift and break. It does not collect anything about you beyond the standard analytics event described below.

Every earning link on this site carries rel="sponsored nofollow noopener", which is how you tell a search engine that a link is commercial. Links to manufacturer spec pages, OSHA, ASTM and NIOSH are ordinary citations and are not tagged or cloaked — we earn nothing from those.

Why we show no prices

We do not have a live price feed. Rather than print a number that could be months out of date, every buy button on this site says “Check price on Amazon” and sends you to see the current price yourself.

Where a manufacturer's list price appears on a product card it is labeled MSRP, cited to the page it came from and dated. That is a different thing from a street price and we do not present it as one.

What we do and do not earn from

• Amazon. The only program this site participates in. Every product link goes there.
• Manufacturer links. Links to Thorogood, Red Wing, Danner, KEEN, BRUNT and the rest go to their spec pages as citations. We are not in any of their affiliate programs and earn nothing from those clicks.
• No sponsored content. No brand has paid for a mention, a placement or a verdict on this site.
• No ads. There is no display advertising on this site.

How we keep commission out of the recommendations

The structural answer is that every product here links to the same retailer at the same commission rate, so we have no financial reason to prefer one boot over another. Recommending a cheaper boot costs us slightly less commission and we do it routinely — the Timberland PRO comparison and the Red Wing value comparison both tell some readers to buy the cheaper option.

On top of that, the rules on the editorial policy page are explicit: no paid placement, no pre-publication review, no sponsored content.

What is tracked

When you click a product link we record an analytics event noting which merchant was clicked and from which page. It is used to understand which guides are useful, and it does not identify you.

Amazon sets its own cookies once you arrive on their site, under their own policies. What we collect on our side is described in the privacy policy.

FTC statement

This disclosure is provided in accordance with the US Federal Trade Commission's Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (16 CFR Part 255). Steel & Sole participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

In addition to this page, a disclosure appears in the footer of every page on the site, on every page carrying product recommendations, and directly beneath every individual buy button.

Questions

If anything here is unclear, or you think a link is not properly disclosed, tell us: contact@steelandsole.com or via the contact page.