How ROOTED makes money
A rating is only worth reading if nobody could buy it. This page says how ROOTED is paid for, and what it will never take money for. It is a standard we hold ourselves to, written down so you can hold us to it too.
1How ROOTED is paid for today
Members pay for ROOTED. A membership costs $10 a month and unlocks the ROOTED Assistant: 320 to 400 Assistant answers a month. Lookups do not count. The ratings, the standards, the Local Food Map and Rooted U are free, with or without one.
ROOTED has no affiliate links today. A check runs before every change to the site is published, and it fails if one appears.
2What we will never take money for
- A rating or a tier. No brand can pay for a rating or pay to change one.
- A place on a shelf. Where a product sits on a shelf, and in what order, is never for sale.
- Inclusion. No brand pays to be on ROOTED, and no place pays to be on the map or in a store guide.
- A look at its rating. We never show a brand its rating in exchange for anything.
3If we ever earn a commission
ROOTED earns no commission on any link today. If that ever changes, these are the rules that will govern it, from the first link:
- A commission is paid on a sale, after a rating that already existed. A rating is never written, changed or timed for a commission.
- A commission never varies by tier.
- A commission is disclosed at the point of the link, beside the link itself, not only in a footer.
- When a brand we earn from drops a tier, we publish the drop as fast as we would publish a promotion.
4The ROOTED Approved seal
The ROOTED Approved seal is licensed to brands free of charge. A brand cannot buy it, and we can revoke it.
5If you think we have broken this
Write to team@rootedapproved.com. How we rate is set out on our How We Rate page, and the rest of our commitments are in the Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy.