| As with anything your read on the net, you can choose to trust what you read or not. And you can further research it elsewhere. A critical mind is a good thing. I like to think that most people here, and definitely my habitual readers, know me and trust me thanks to a solid reputation that I've built over the past few years. If a prominent Django developer where to post a hosting article about Django, I wouldn't question his integrity just because some referral links were used. If I didn't trust what I read, I would simply not buy. Back to your accusation of not disclosing my commercial sponsorship, I'll remind you of the disclosure posted from the get go: "Disclosure: Some of the links above have my referral id. Pretty much any hosting site out there offers affiliate programs these days. Here I only report the Rails hosting sites I consider the best for you, regardless of the small commission I may get. By buying through these links, you get to support this site, and ensure its continued operation. At zero cost to you. Isn’t that nice of you? I feel a bit of love already. :)" I think this makes where I coming from fairly clear. For example, I believe Slicehost gives you less than $10 for each person who buys from them through your referral. Do you have any idea how many hosting companies pay referral fees that are 5 to 10 times more than that? Yet, I wouldn't even dream of including them if I didn't know (directly or indirectly) that they were reliable. To write this article, I first created a list of shared, vps and cloud providers I trusted. And only then did I check if I had an affiliate link to them (or if one was readily available). And it turns out that 3 out of 9 do. The few spare bucks I may make, will help with the hosting fees (currently $85 a month) and the great investment of time I put towards blogging. Again, this is not shady. You are of course free to choose not to trust what I write, or what I've written in the past. To everyone else: I think we have beaten this horse to death already. I've made my position clear. If you don't concur, we'll just have to agree to disagree. |