Affiliate Disclosure

1. What an affiliate link is

An affiliate link is an ordinary link to a retailer's product page that carries a tag identifying AstroEquip as the referrer. If you click it and buy within the retailer's cookie window, the retailer pays us a small referral commission. The price you pay is exactly the same as it would be without the link.

2. How to spot them

Every affiliate link on AstroEquip is labelled. On a Gear Finder result card (and on your Picks page) the “Buy at …” button carries a small (affiliate) tag, and the link itself is marked rel="sponsored" for search engines. Links without that tag — for example the quieter “Take me to product page” manufacturer link — are not affiliate links and earn us nothing.

3. Our promise: affiliate links never affect ranking

This is the one that matters. The Gear Finder ranks products purely on the compatibility-scoring rules described in How the engine matches. Whether a product has an affiliate link, and whatever the commission on it, carries zero weight in that score. We would rather show you the right gear with no commission than the wrong gear with one — the whole product depends on that trust.

Which retailer you see. When more than one partner can supply an item, the Buy link points to the one that best fits your region — a retailer that ships to your area, ideally in your currency, so you avoid surprise customs charges or exchange-rate costs. To do that we read only the approximate region and currency Shopify already infers for your visit, at the moment the page loads; it is never stored and forms no part of any record we keep. This is a convenience for you alone: it never changes which products appear or how they are ranked — an affiliate link, and which retailer it points to, both carry zero weight in that score. You can switch it off in our cookie banner (the “Region & currency” category), and we then choose the Buy link by site domain only.

4. Who we partner with

AstroEquip currently participates in these affiliate programmes:

• AstroShop.eu (nimax GmbH) — a European astronomy retailer.
• First Light Optics — a UK astronomy retailer.
• Amazon Associates — used as a fallback when we have no direct retailer link for an item. As an Amazon Associate, AstroEquip earns from qualifying purchases.

We only join official affiliate programmes — we never fabricate, scrape, or otherwise manufacture tracking links, and we keep this list current as we add or remove retailers.

5. What is tracked when you click

When you click a tagged Buy button you leave AstroEquip for the retailer's own website. We set no advertising or cross-site cookie of our own. If you have accepted the Analytics cookie category, we record one anonymous engagement event (a random session ID, the product, and the action — no email, IP, or customer ID), the same way we log other clicks inside the Gear Finder, so we can see which recommendations are useful. The retailer (for example AstroShop) sets its own first-party cookie on its own domain to remember that you arrived via AstroEquip, so it can attribute a possible purchase to us. That processing happens under the retailer's privacy policy, not ours. We only ever receive aggregate commission reports; we never learn who you are or what you viewed. For the full picture see our Privacy Policy.

6. It costs you nothing

Affiliate commissions are paid by the retailer out of their own margin. You pay the same price you would pay by going to the retailer directly. Using our links is simply a free, entirely optional way to support continued development of the Gear Finder and Telescope Simulator — and it is gratefully received.

7. Questions

If anything here is unclear, or you ever think a recommendation has been swayed by a commercial relationship, email info@astroequip.eu. The engine is rules-based and open to inspection, so any bias is a bug we can fix in code — not a black box we ask you to trust.