Affiliate disclosure

An affiliate placement is a link or recommendation on this site that earns us a commission when a reader clicks through and completes a qualifying action (typically a purchase or a sign-up) on the partner's site. The reader pays the same price they would pay if they reached the partner directly; the commission is paid by the partner out of their margin, not added to the reader's cost.

We treat every affiliate placement as a recommendation we are willing to defend on editorial grounds first, and earn revenue from second. If we would not link to it without the affiliate program, we do not link to it with the program either.

Every affiliate link on this site carries a visible "Affiliate link" label alongside it, and where the link sits inside a partner card, the card itself carries a disclosure band naming the relationship before the reader engages. Disclosures are placed where the reader sees them before clicking, not in a separate section the reader has to find.

The disclosures conform to current ACCC guidance on influencer and affiliate disclosure (the "clear, prominent, in close proximity to the recommendation" standard). If a placement does not carry that label, it is not an affiliate placement.

Sponsored content, when active, is labelled "Sponsored" in equal weight to the surrounding editorial. Sponsored layouts do not borrow editorial framing or typography. Sponsored content and affiliate placements are distinct categories: an affiliate placement is editorial that earns commission; sponsored content is paid placement.

The presence or absence of an affiliate program does not influence whether a product, provider, or category is covered. We cover what is informative for Australian fuel buyers; we monetise the subset where an affiliate program exists and the recommendation is one we would make anyway.

Headline figures, status bands, reserve days, and supply-health calculations are derived from primary sources only. Affiliate revenue does not change a colour band, weight a stress score, or reframe a primary-source figure. The methodology behind every calculation is documented at /methodology.

Layout and disclosure standards do not change during crisis or calm periods. Our editorial register may escalate on published triggers; our commercial posture does not.

We do not accept affiliate relationships with oil majors, refiners, fuel retailers, or fossil-aligned advocacy organisations. The reasoning is editorial independence: the site reports on the conditions those entities operate within, and a financial relationship would compromise the framing.

We do not run programmatic display advertising. The site's funding model is disclosed affiliate placements, with reader subscriptions and business-to-business licensing planned but not yet operating. An affiliate placement appears only where a relationship is active and disclosed; until then the relevant links are simply not shown. Programmatic display banners do not appear here.

Any active affiliate relationship is reviewed quarterly against this excluded-category list at renewal, and any current relationships are listed in the conflicts disclosure on /editorial-standards so any reader can audit the list before deciding how to weigh a recommendation.

If a placement on the site reads as an affiliate or sponsored placement but the disclosure is missing or unclear, that is a defect we want fixed quickly. Send us a note via the contact page with subject [Correction] disclosure and the page URL; the response window is the same as for editorial corrections (acknowledgement within 2 business days, substantive reply within 10).

You can also lodge a complaint with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission directly through accc.gov.au. We support reader recourse to the regulator and will cooperate with any ACCC enquiry on this site's disclosure practices.