How EOD makes money,
and what we won't do for it.

Many outbound links on EOD are affiliate links. When you click one and buy something, the merchant pays EOD a small commission, usually between 2% and 20% of the sale, depending on the brand. The price you pay is the same either way.

Affiliate links are how we keep the site sustainable without an ad-supported model. We don't run display ads, we don't sell your data, and we don't take payment from brands in exchange for coverage of any specific product.

We use Skimlinks to convert outbound links to affiliate links automatically across the site, plus direct affiliate relationships with select brands. If a link goes to a merchant in one of those networks, it's an affiliate link by default.

Whether a brand has an affiliate program does not influence whether they appear on EOD. The decision tree is the same as it's always been: does this thing actually enhance the end of someone's day, would we recommend it to a friend, can we back it up with the evidence we publish next to it.

When the Curator chooses candidates for the daily queue, it does weight slightly toward merchants we can monetize, about 3-to-1, but editors still publish non-monetizable finds (local services, niche products, free protocols) any time they meet the bar. The mix is intentional.

Negative reviews and critical takes get published whether the brand is an affiliate or not. We've never taken a brand down because they asked, and never will.

We may eventually offer brands a way to pay for a verified-honest review slot, where a brand sponsors a community member to try their product and write whatever they think, positive or negative, and the reviewer gets paid regardless of the take. If we do that, every sponsored review will carry a clear “Sponsored” badge in the feed, on the detail page, and in any AI summary.

As of today, no content on EOD is sponsored in that sense. The only monetization is the affiliate-link rail described above.

When a community member submits a find, their submission is reviewed on its own merits. Whether the submission links to an affiliate- covered merchant or a tiny indie shop has no bearing on whether it gets published.

If a submitted link includes the submitter's own affiliate code, we ask the submitter to disclose it in the description, and we leave it intact. Undisclosed affiliate codes get removed. Repeat offenders get banned.

The AI Evidence Panel that appears on many finds (mechanism, evidence grade, verdict, citations) is generated by a model that never sees the submitter's pitch, only the product name and category. That design is intentional: the verdict is supposed to be independent of how the find was framed by whoever submitted it, and independent of whether the merchant is an affiliate.

We make mistakes. If you spot an evidence claim that's wrong, email hello@instrumentcapital.com and an editor will look.

You can browse EOD without clicking any affiliate links and the site works the same. You can also disable Skimlinks in your browser if you want to strip the affiliate rewriting; doing so means we earn nothing from your visit, which is your call to make.

If a specific find's affiliate relationship feels unclear, email and ask. We'll tell you whether we earn on it and how much.