1. What an affiliate link is
An affiliate link is a URL that carries a small tracking parameter identifying us as the referring site. When you click one and complete a purchase on the vendor's site, the vendor pays us a commission out of their revenue on that sale. Your final price is identical — the commission comes out of the vendor's margin, not a markup added to you.
2. How it does (and doesn't) influence Stacked
It does not influence:
- Vendor rankings or Stacked Scores. The Stacked Score methodology is published on our /methodology page. Scores are computed from purity testing, community reputation, shipping speed, payment security, customer service, catalog depth, price competitiveness, and regulatory history. Commission rate is not an input. A vendor paying us 25% commission will score lower than a vendor paying us 10% if the quality signals favor the lower-commission vendor.
- Trial analysis, peptide profiles, or protocol references. Scientific content is summarized from published research regardless of any vendor relationship.
- Price-tracker rankings.The “Best $/mg” designation in the price tracker is pure math — whichever in-stock SKU has the lowest cost-per-milligram wins, regardless of whether we earn 25% or 10% on that vendor's sales.
- Which vendors we cover.We track vendors based on catalog relevance, community presence, and research-use quality. We turn down affiliate partnerships with vendors whose quality or compliance posture we don't feel comfortable endorsing.
It does influence:
- Our ability to publish freely.Affiliate revenue is what pays for Stacked — the editorial work, the pricing refresh pipeline, the hosting, the scientific research time. Without it, this site doesn't exist.
- Which vendors we contact for partnership.When we identify a high-quality vendor we want to cover, we reach out to see if they have an affiliate program. If they don't, we'll often still cover them — but the ones with relationships get the live-pricing integration (because their catalogs are the ones we're scraping daily).
3. The specific programs we participate in
Research-peptide vendor affiliate programs
We have direct affiliate relationships with many of the research- peptide vendors listed on the Site. Links to those vendors from our catalog, price tracker, tools, coupons page, and blog posts are affiliate-tracked. We mark every outbound affiliate link with rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" per FTC + search-engine convention.
Amazon Associates
Stacked 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. Any recommendations on our Gear + Companions page that link to Amazon are Amazon Associates affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
4. Coupon codes
Some of the vendor partnerships include a coupon code for Stacked visitors (typically 10–50% off). Those codes are listed on our Coupons page and on individual vendor pages. When you use one, the discount comes out of the vendor's margin — same mechanism as the affiliate commission, just flowing in your direction instead of ours. You save, we still earn a (smaller) commission, the vendor keeps a happy customer. No catch.
5. What we won't do
- Pretend we don't have affiliate relationships
- Publish a “review” that's really a paid placement without disclosing
- Let commission rate drive which vendor shows up as the “Best $/mg” option on any peptide
- Falsify pricing, stock, or trust-score data to favor partner vendors
- Accept payment to remove or downgrade coverage of a competing vendor
- Cookie-stuff, force-click, or otherwise violate vendor affiliate program terms
6. If a vendor we partner with starts underperforming
We publish the honest score. Vendors we partner with have been downgraded on this site when their purity testing slipped, when their shipping times degraded, or when a community reputation signal turned sharply negative. The revenue relationship has never pulled a score up.
7. How links are marked
Every affiliate link on the Site carries the standard HTML relationship attributes rel="sponsored nofollow noopener". That's the technical signal to browsers, search engines, and screen readers that the link is a commercial relationship. You'll see disclosure text near every “Shop” button and a short disclosure in the footer of every blog post.
8. Compliance
This disclosure is published per the US Federal Trade Commission's Endorsement Guides (16 CFR Part 255) and in accordance with Amazon Associates Program Operating Agreement requirements for participant sites. If you have a concern about how we're disclosing or operating, email jon@stacked-hq.com.
9. Related policies
- Stacked Score Methodology — how vendor scores are computed, with published weights
- Privacy Policy — what affiliate click data we log, for how long
- Terms of Service — the general rules of using the Site
