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Tip & Topcoat

Disclosure

Affiliate disclosure

In plain English: this site earns commission when you buy through its links, and here is exactly how that works.

The short version

Tip & Topcoat is free to read and funded by affiliate commission. When you click a buy button here and purchase something, we may earn a commission from the retailer. You pay nothing extra — the price is the same as it would be if you had gone straight to the retailer.

That is the whole business model. There are no sponsored posts, no paid reviews, and no brand has paid to appear on this site or to be ranked in any particular position.

Amazon Associates

Tip & Topcoat 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. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

Our Amazon Associates tracking ID is jmg-tiptopcoat-20, and it is applied to every Amazon link on this site.

Every product link here goes through a short redirect on our own domain — you will see an address beginning /go/ before you arrive at the retailer. That redirect does two things: it adds our tracking tag, and it means that if a product moves to a different retailer later we can update one setting rather than editing dozens of pages.

Every commercial link is marked rel="sponsored nofollow" in the page's code, which is how we tell search engines the link is commercial. Every buy button is labeled #ad and carries a link back to this page.

The /go/ pages themselves are excluded from search engines and carry no content — they exist only to forward you.

On prices

This site does not publish product prices. There is no live price data here yet, so rather than printing a number that might be months out of date, every buy button reads "Check price on Amazon" and takes you to the current listing.

Where salon costs appear — on the cost comparison pages — those are third-party market survey figures, dated and attributed to their source on the page. They describe what salons charge, never what a product costs.

If live price data is added later, every price will carry the date it was checked, and prices older than 48 hours will disappear automatically rather than being shown stale.

Why commission does not decide a pick

You should be skeptical of this claim wherever you read it, so here is what makes it checkable rather than just asserted:

  • The method is published. Every roundup shows the scoring rubric and its weights. The full method is here.
  • Every pick states a drawback. Every product carries a "what is not good" list and a "skip this if" line. A roundup in which nothing has a downside reads as paid.
  • The safety guides carry nothing to buy. Our pages on UV lamps, nail drills and nail damage have no comparison table and no buy button at all. Those are among the most-read pages here and they are the easiest to monetize. We do not.
  • We recommend not buying things. Several pages here tell you to postpone a purchase, skip a product category, or use something you already own instead.

What we do not earn from

  • Sponsored content or paid placements — we accept neither.
  • Selling your data. We do not sell or share personal information. See the privacy policy.
  • Reference links. Where we mention a brand without a commercial link, we earn nothing from it.

FTC compliance

This disclosure is provided in line with the US Federal Trade Commission's guidance on endorsements and testimonials. It appears in the footer of every page on this site, above the fold on every page that carries affiliate links, and beneath every individual buy button.

If anything here is unclear, ask: janet.hoyo@yahoo.com.

Publisher

Tip & Topcoat is published by Janet Media Group.