Affiliate Disclosure

Some posts contain affiliate links. Here's exactly how they work and how products are chosen.

Honesty up front: some of the posts on LeafyStart contain affiliate links. Here’s what that means, in plain terms.

What an affiliate link is

An affiliate link is a regular link to a product (usually on a retailer like Amazon, or a specialty garden supplier) that’s tagged with a small tracking code. If you click the link and end up buying the product – sometimes within a few hours, sometimes within a few days, depending on the retailer – we earn a small commission. The price you pay is exactly the same as it would be if you went to the retailer directly.

Why we use them

Affiliate commissions help keep the site free. We don’t run intrusive pop-ups, don’t sell email lists, and try to keep the ads modest. Affiliate links – when they’re genuinely useful – are how the site stays online.

How we choose products

  • We only link to products we’ve personally used, or that we would buy ourselves based on careful research.
  • We never write a guide around a product. We write guides around beginner questions and link to specific products only when one is genuinely helpful.
  • If a product turns out to be disappointing, we either remove the link or replace it with a better recommendation.

How affiliate links are marked

Any post containing affiliate links has a clear disclosure box at the top of the article. Where the FTC and other rules require additional disclosures (such as the words “affiliate link”), they’re added next to the link itself.

Programs we participate in

The site is a participant 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 (and applicable country sites).
  • Selected gardening retailers’ affiliate programs from time to time. When this is the case, the same disclosure rules apply.

Your trust is the whole point

This site only works if you can trust what we write. If a recommendation here ever feels off or sales-y, please tell us. We’d rather pull a link than recommend something we wouldn’t use.