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SideIncomeHQ
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Sponsored posts for an online-business audience

We sell clearly-labelled sponsored posts to business services, agencies and SaaS tools, and reply to every enquiry in 2 days (per the reply window set out below), counting business days only.

Enquire about a placement

Last updated

Enquire about a placement

Include your target URL, topic, budget and whether you want a sponsored post, advertising or to buy the site.

Editor reviewing a printed sponsored-post brief at a home desk, marking the disclosure line in pencil

What a placement includes

Every accepted placement ships with the same five things: the live URL, the sponsored label as published, the anchor text and destination agreed in writing beforehand, the section of the site the piece sits in, and a copy of the disclosure wording for your own compliance file.

What it never includes is a change to the order of our recommendations, which is not part of any deal at any rate. If your brief needs something outside that list, ask before you budget for it.

The brands, they have their legal teams are monitoring domains that get registered and they'll like hammer you with trademark lawsuits and all sorts of stuff like that.

Mark Webster, co-founder, Authority Hacker; first profitable site 2008; MSc business studies, University of Edinburgh Source: 7 REAL AFFILIATE SITES Dissected (And Why They're Successful) (Ep. 226)
Why this matters

Concrete legal downside of the most common beginner domain-naming instinct (putting the brand you review in the domain), a risk a how-to page can otherwise only assert.

What we accept
  • Make money online, side hustles and passive income
  • Starting and growing an online business
  • SEO, marketing and business software and tools
  • Business services and agencies relevant to the above
What we don't accept
  • Casino, gambling, betting or lottery
  • Payday loans and high-risk finance
  • Adult content
  • Anything unrelated to our topics, or misleading claims

Keeping topics coherent protects the site's rankings, which is what makes a placement here worth having.

Formats

What you can actually buy

Four formats, and the honest note on each. If what you want is not here, ask: the answer is either a price or a plain no.

Sponsored post

A full article about your product or service, labelled as sponsored at the top of the page. You can supply the draft or we can write it from your brief. Outbound links to you carry rel="sponsored".

Link inside an existing post

A contextual mention added to a page that already covers your topic. Cheaper than a new article, and only offered where the link genuinely fits the section it sits in.

Brand placement

A labelled panel or logo placement in a specific silo, rather than an article. Useful for tools and services that want presence without a review.

Buying the site

Occasionally someone asks whether the whole property is for sale rather than a placement. Send the enquiry and we will answer it straight either way.

Every sponsored placement here is labelled sponsored and carries rel="sponsored". That is not negotiable, and it is why the links keep working.

SideIncomeHQ editorial
Why this matters

If you buy placements, this is the question to ask every publisher: an unlabelled link is a liability that can be devalued or penalised later. Compliance is the durability, not the tax.

Can sponsored posts be trusted?

A labelled sponsored post can be read for exactly what it is, and that is the entire argument for labelling it. Two things decide whether one is trustworthy: whether the disclosure appears before you start reading, and whether the publisher kept editorial control over the claims inside it.

When both are true, a sponsored post is an advertisement you can evaluate. When either is missing, it is an advertisement pretending to be a review.

This matters commercially as well as ethically. A reader who discovers a placement was hidden stops trusting every other page on the site, which destroys the thing an advertiser was paying to borrow.

Our disclosure policy is written so that nobody has to guess, and the methodology page lists the four claims we never make anywhere on the site, paid or not.

Do you get paid for sponsored posts?

Yes. A flat fee, agreed before anything is written, covering the research, writing, editing and hosting of the piece. That payment is precisely the material connection the US Federal Trade Commission's endorsement guides require to be disclosed, which is why the label is at the top of the page rather than in small print underneath.

What the fee does not buy is a change to our editorial judgement. The order of tools in our comparison tables is set by what we can document about each one, and it is not for sale at any price.

An advertiser who needs to be recommended first is better served by a site that sells that, and we would rather lose the placement than sell it.

Can you give me an example of a sponsored post?

A concrete one: an SEO software company pays for an article explaining how their tool handles a job our readers already struggle with. The page opens with a visible sponsored label.

Every link to the company carries rel="sponsored". The claims in it are ones we were willing to put our name to, so anything unverifiable came out at the edit stage.

It sits inside the silo where that topic belongs, not on a stranded page built only to hold a link.

That last detail is the one advertisers underrate. A placement on a page nothing links to, in a section the site does not otherwise cover, is worth very little, however clean the markup is.

What we will not do, at any price

No unlabelled placements
There is no version of this where a paid piece runs without a sponsored label. Not for a higher rate, not because a competitor does it.
No do-follow paid links
Paid links pass rel="sponsored". Google's link spam policy treats a paid link that passes ranking signals as a violation, and we are not putting the site at risk for one placement.
No edits to our recommendations
The order of tools in our comparisons is not for sale. You can buy a placement; you cannot buy a position in a ranking table.
No invented proof
We will not publish income screenshots, testimonials or case-study numbers we cannot verify, even if you supply them.

Where our stage is relevant

SideIncomeHQ is a newer publication. We do not quote traffic figures we have not earned, and we price placements for what the site is now rather than what we hope it becomes.

If a media kit full of impressive numbers is what you need to sign off a budget, we are not yet that site, and saying so is cheaper for both of us than discovering it later.

Also worth reading

Contributors who want to publish with us rather than buy a placement should start at write for us, which sets out the editorial standard. For what the site covers and who it is written for, the SideIncomeHQ homepage is the shortest route in.

Process

How a placement runs, start to finish

Five steps, and a two-business-day reply at step two whether the answer is yes or no.

01

You send the enquiry

Target URL, topic, format and budget. The more specific the brief, the faster the answer.

02

We reply within two business days

Either a rate and a slot, or a plain no with the reason. We do not leave enquiries sitting unanswered.

03

We agree the brief

What the piece covers, which page it sits on, which anchor text is used, and where the link points.

04

We publish it labelled

Sponsored label at the top of the page, rel="sponsored" on your links, and the piece filed in a section where the topic belongs.

05

You get the live URL

Plus the disclosure wording as published, so your own compliance team can see exactly how the placement is marked.

We turn down placements that do not fit the topic. A casino link on a side-income site helps nobody, least of all the buyer.

SideIncomeHQ editorial
Why this matters

Topical fit is the part of a placement that actually carries value. A link from an unrelated page is cheap for a reason.

Rates, and why they are not published

Rates depend on format, placement and how much of the writing is ours, so a single published number would be wrong for most enquiries in one direction or the other. Send a budget with the brief and you will get a straight answer about what it covers.

We are transparent about our stage rather than inflating numbers to justify a rate card. That is the same standard applied to every other page here: documented facts where we have them, and an explicit note where we do not.

Source: FTC Endorsement GuidesSource: Google Search Central SEO Starter Guide

Sponsored placement and editorial ranking are separable, and the separation is testable

The promise on this page is checkable, which is the only kind worth making. Sponsored placements are labelled and sit outside the recommendation order, and the FTC's endorsement guides at 16 CFR section 255.5 set the disclosure standard those placements have to meet.

You do not have to take that on trust. Open any comparison on this site, look for the label and the rel attribute on the outbound link, and see whether a paid placement has moved anything above something that scored higher.

What this does not say: A published policy is evidence of intent, not proof of compliance on every page.

FTC's Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking (2026-09-05)

FAQ

Sponsored post questions, answered straight

How are sponsored placements labeled?

Every paid placement carries a visible label the reader sees before the content, and the outbound links in it carry rel="sponsored" or nofollow. That follows the FTC's endorsement guides for material connections and Google's guidance for paid links, and it is not negotiable: a placement that cannot be labeled is a placement we decline.

What kinds of content do you turn down?

Casino, gambling, payday, adult and unrelated finance content, exact-match anchor stuffing, hidden links, duplicate or previously published drafts, and anything promising readers guaranteed income.

Do you get paid for sponsored posts?

Yes, that is what makes them sponsored. A publisher is paid a flat fee to research, write, edit and host the piece, and the payment is exactly the material connection the FTC requires be disclosed to readers. On this site that disclosure is a label at the top of the page, not a line buried in the footer.

Can sponsored posts be trusted?

A labelled one can be read for what it is, which is the whole point of labelling it. Judge a sponsored post on two things: whether the disclosure is visible before you start reading, and whether the publisher kept editorial control over the claims. Where either is missing, treat the page as an advertisement written by the advertiser.

Can you give me an example of a sponsored post?

A software company pays for an article explaining how their tool solves a problem our readers have. It carries a sponsored label at the top, their links use rel="sponsored", the claims are ones we were willing to publish, and it sits in the silo where that topic belongs. That is the whole format.

How much does a sponsored post cost on SideIncomeHQ?

Rates are quoted on enquiry, because they depend on format, placement and how much writing we do. We are a newer publication and we price accordingly rather than quoting a figure borrowed from a bigger site. Tell us your budget in the enquiry and we will tell you honestly what it does or does not buy.

Do you accept do-follow links in paid placements?

No. Every paid outbound link uses rel="sponsored". If a do-follow link is your requirement, we are the wrong site, and we would rather say that in the first reply than take the money and quietly nofollow it afterwards.

Do I write the sponsored post, or do you?

Either. Supply a finished draft and we will edit it to our standards, or send a brief and we will write it. In both cases we keep final editorial control, so a claim we cannot stand behind gets changed or the piece does not run.

What happens if you reject my enquiry?

You get a reply saying so, with the reason, inside the same two business days. Most rejections are topic fit rather than quality: we keep the silos coherent because that is what protects the rankings a placement here is being bought for.

Will the post stay live?

Yes, unless a factual correction, a legal request or a broken destination forces a change, in which case we contact you first. We do not run quiet link cleanups. If a term matters to you, put it in the enquiry and get it in writing before you pay.

Sources

  1. FTC's Endorsement Guides: What People Are AskingFederal Trade Commissionread 2026-09-05
  2. SEO Starter Guide: The BasicsGoogle Search Centralread 2026-09-05

What buying a placement here looks like

Cost ladder: Enquiry step 1, Rates and slot step 2, Draft and review step 3, Published and labelled step 4Enquiry: step 1 (tell us what you are promoting). Rates and slot: step 2 (we reply within two business days). Draft and review: step 3 (claims checked, links qualified). Published and labelled: step 4 (a visible label before the content). Values are steps from enquiry to publication.Enquirystep 1tell us what you are promotingRates and slotstep 2we reply within two business daysDraft and reviewstep 3claims checked, links qualifiedPublished and labelledstep 4a visible label before the contentsteps from enquiry to publication, lowest 1, highest 4
The four steps every paid placement goes through, including the reply window we hold ourselves to and the label the reader sees before the content.

The two numbers we commit to

Comparison of Placements we take each month, Business days to a replyPlacements we take each month: 1. Business days to a reply: 2.Placements we take each month1a small number, every one labelledBusiness days to a reply2two business days
We take a small number of placements each month and reply to enquiries within two business days.
Two printed drafts side by side on a desk with sticky notes marking the paragraphs a reviewer flagged

Want your tool or offer in front of this audience?

We take a small number of sponsored posts and advertising placements each month, every one of them labelled. Tell us what you are promoting and we reply within two business days with rates and the next open slot. Everything we publish sits on SideIncomeHQ, and the archive is open before you decide.

Enquire about a sponsored post

Rates and formats come back with the reply. Every placement is labelled.

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