It is this time of the year again. I sadly see many blogs loading their pages with so much advertising these days that it makes it hard to spot the actual content anymore. Some also opted for membership programs like Patreon. We on the other hand always financed this blog exclusively through unobtrusive affiliate links and donations. This is only possible because it is a passion project by people with actual jobs that just happen to love photography.

I still have no intention to add annoying adverts or introducing a membership/Patreon system, as I have always been an advocate of free internet and freely accessible information. I also don’t want to push junk software with high margins that I would never want to use myself or offer questionably useful presets.

This means I have to push this article 1-2 times per year – similar to what Wikipedia is doing every now and then – to reach more people.

There are many articles here that generate zero income: for example the Analogue Adventures and everything from the Technical Knowledge category, as these are not really about a product that could be bought by you. Same is also true for the reviews of simply bad lenses. Why would you buy them through affiliate links if we just told you they suck? 

Affiliate links also don’t work for everyone and every item. If you are not from Canada or the US, B&H is surely less attractive. Many people from Europe don’t like ordering directly from Asia because of import duties and some items may also not be available through our affiliate partners at all.

Thinking of reviews of affordable vintage lenses: if you buy a lens for $50 on eBay, we only get a $1 commission for that. So in these cases, you would do us a bigger favour by donating $5 and buying that lens at a lower price locally (if possible), than using the affiliate links.

If you find yourself in one of these categories – or if you simply want to support us without using affiliate links – you can do that by using this Paypal donate button under our articles:

via Paypal (BastianK)
via Paypal (Martin)

The money you donate will go directly to the author of that article. Even though the blog had two million visitors last year according to our statistics, only around 100 decided to make a donation (you know who you are, thanks a lot for that!), so you can make a real difference here.

And if you often find yourself ordering from one of our affiliates: why not bookmark and use any of our Amazon or eBay links as starting point for your purchases? It won’t cost you anything extra and helps us a lot. It doesn’t matter what you order, whether it is photography related or not, as long as you clicked on one of the links first.

Some articles highlighting the work we do here you might have missed:
Different Filter Stacks and what they mean for us: Sony E | Nikon Z | Leica M | Kolari UT
Comparison: Super Fast 35mm f/0.95 | f/1.2 Fullframe Lenses
Sony FE Lenses: The honest Guide for the A7/A9/A1 Series

And some quirky and rare lenses you won’t find being reviewed this thorough anywhere else:
Review: TTArtisan 75mm f/1.5 – A Modern and Affordable Zeiss Biotar 75/1.5?
Review: Laowa 8-15mm f/2.8 FF Zoom Fisheye
Review: SLRmagic 50mm 0.95 Hyperprime LM
Review: Nikon 200mm 2.0 IF-ED Ai – The first of its Kind