How the rest of the industry actually works
ElectricBikeReport, ElectrekBikes, BikeRide, and most YouTube channels make 70–90% of their revenue from affiliate commissions when you click 'Buy Now.' That's not inherently corrupt — but it shapes what they review, how they rank, and what they don't tell you.
Bikes that don't offer affiliate programs (or that don't sell direct online) get systematically under-covered. Bikes with high commission rates get pushed harder. That's the market structure. Don't blame the writers — blame the model.
Our model — fully disclosed
No brand can buy a score, a ranking, a verdict or a place in a 'best of' list. Not for any price. That rule has no exceptions and it is the one thing this site is built on.
We do sell advertising, and we have two paid-placement partners — Battery Safety Company and Mizer Motor Works. They pay for the placement itself, never for a verdict, and we earn nothing when you buy from them. Every one of those placements is labelled where it appears and named on our disclosure page. We would rather tell you this plainly than let you discover it.
We make money from: (1) the newsletter audience we've built over 15+ years, (2) consulting work the team does separately for non-bike clients, (3) future paid premium content (deep-dive ownership reports — clearly marked when launched).
We do earn affiliate commission on two brands, Ride1Up and LeoGuar. Those links are tagged as paid, disclosed on the page, and excluded from any influence over scores or rankings. Every other outbound link on this site — Amazon and Temu included — earns us nothing, and is tagged so you can verify that.
How to spot a sponsored review elsewhere
If every review is 9/10 or higher, it's sponsored.
If the 'cons' section is one sentence and stylistic ('we wish it came in blue'), it's sponsored.
If the same brand appears in 4+ 'best of' lists on the same site, it's affiliate-heavy at minimum.
If there's no byline or the writer has 12 reviews across 12 categories in 6 months, the site is content-farmed.
"We're not anti-affiliate. We're anti-pretending-to-be-editorial. The industry needs a site that says what it is, every single time. So we built one."