Independent editorial coverage of XAU/USD trading services · Est. 2024
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Affiliate disclosure

How we make money and how we keep it honest.

Full disclosure of our revenue model, the affiliate relationship with Gold Trade Signals, and what we do to stop the relationship from biasing our coverage.

How we make money

The Gold Trade Signals Review generates revenue through affiliate commission. When readers join Gold Trade Signals through links on this site we receive a commission from the service. This doesn't cost you anything additional. The commission comes from the service's existing marketing budget, not added to anything you pay.

For Gold Trade Signals' free tier (the default), the commission is paid as a portion of the broker rebate the service receives when you open a trading account. Your trading conditions don't change. Spreads, commissions and execution stay identical to what the broker would charge any other customer.

What this means in practice

This is the same revenue model used by review sites like ForexBrokers.com, StockBrokers.com, NerdWallet, and Wirecutter. It's the standard model for editorial publications that cover paid services. The alternative would be either a paywalled subscription (which limits readership) or display advertising (which creates different but worse incentive misalignments).

The risks of this model

The honest concern with affiliate-funded review sites is that the publication has a financial incentive to write favourably about services it's affiliated with. We acknowledge this tension openly. Here's what we do about it.

1. Scoring before commercial

Our scoring framework was applied to Gold Trade Signals before any affiliate relationship was negotiated. The scoring methodology is published openly at our methodology page and is the same framework we apply to other services. Affiliate status doesn't change the score.

2. Negative findings published

Where Gold Trade Signals has weaknesses we publish them. Our current review documents:

None of these were softened or removed at any point in our editorial process.

3. Disclosed criticisms of the affiliate service

Where we have an affiliate relationship with a service, we still publish criticisms of that service where they exist. Our coverage of Gold Trade Signals documents the broker-switch friction, the Telegram-only delivery model and the August 2025 win-rate dip. None of these were softened or removed during the publication process.

What we don't accept

We don't accept:

If we ever accept any of these in future, this page gets updated openly and the affected coverage gets clearly labelled.

Cookies and tracking

We use standard analytics cookies to understand how readers use the site. Affiliate links use tracking parameters so providers can attribute signups to us. These parameters don't store personal information beyond the standard affiliate tracking model.

Spot something that looks like undisclosed influence?

If you think any of our content contains undisclosed commercial influence, or if you've spotted a potential conflict of interest, we publish corrections openly.