Disclosures & Affiliate Policy

Transparency is our Default Setting

At Rack2Cloud, our mission is to provide “No Fluff, Just Engineering.” Part of that mission involves being 100% transparent about how this site is funded. We believe that professional technical advice should be independent, but we also believe in being honest about the business model that keeps our Engineering Workbench and Deep Dives free for the community.

Some of the links on this website are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase an item (such as a technical book on Amazon or a training course on Pluralsight), Rack2Cloud may receive an affiliate commission.

Crucial Note: This comes at no additional cost to you. In many cases, our partnerships allow us to highlight discounts or trials that may not be easily found elsewhere.

2. How We Choose Partners

We do not join affiliate programs for products we don’t believe in. Our partnerships are restricted to:

  • Technical Gear & Hardware: Tools and equipment we actually use in our labs.
  • Professional Training: Platforms like Pluralsight that provide genuine value to career growth.
  • Infrastructure Services: Cloud or hosting providers that meet our architectural standards.

3. The “Church and State” Policy

We maintain a strict separation between our revenue and our editorial verdicts.

  • No Pay-to-Play: We never accept payment to write a “positive” review or comparison.
  • The Lab Truth: If a product fails in our lab during a Deep Dive, we will report those failures regardless of any affiliate relationship.
  • Bias Mitigation: Our 3-Stage Vetting Process (Lab-First, Peer Challenge, and Documentation Anchoring) is specifically designed to strip away marketing bias and focus on hard technical data.

4. Amazon Associate Disclosure

Rack2Cloud 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.

5. Why We Do This

Running a high-performance home lab, maintaining a global cloud workbench, and spending dozens of hours peer-reviewing technical articles costs both time and money. Affiliate revenue allows us to keep the lights on and keep the content “No Fluff” without resorting to annoying pop-up ads or gated “paywalls”.

Implementation Steps

  1. Page Title: Use “Disclosures & Affiliate Policy”.
  2. Slug: Set the URL to /disclosures/ to match the link we put in your footer and Editorial Guidelines.
  3. In-Post Disclosure: To be fully compliant with FTC rules, you should have a small line at the top of posts that contain affiliate links.