Affiliate disclosure
How this site makes money, written the way we would want it written to us.
Last updated
Pan & Provision is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. When you buy something through a link on this site, we earn a commission. It costs you nothing extra — the price you pay is the same as it would be if you went to Amazon directly.
How it actually works
When you click a buy button here, you pass through a redirect on our own domain that adds our Associates tracking tag — fafpanandprovision-20 — and sends you to Amazon. If you buy something within Amazon's attribution window, Amazon pays us a percentage of the sale.
The percentage depends on the product category. Kitchen and dining products, which is nearly everything we write about, sit in one of Amazon's better-paying categories. Adjacent things a kitchen guide might mention — storage, furniture, general household goods — pay less. We mention this because it creates an incentive, and an undisclosed incentive is the actual problem.
What we do about that incentive
- We do not steer toward higher-paying categories. Where the honest recommendation is the cheap pan, the page says so, and several pages here recommend the cheapest thing in their roundup.
- We recommend spending nothing where that is the answer. Several pages tell you to skip a purchase entirely, or to buy one thing instead of two.
- Rank order is never for sale. No manufacturer has ever paid to appear here or to be placed higher, and none can.
- Every product page names a trade-off and a reason to skip it, including the top pick. That is a hard rule of the method, not a stylistic preference.
The comparison-page point, which is the important one
On any comparison page here, we earn exactly the same commission whichever option you choose. Cast iron or carbon steel, stainless or nonstick, one brand or another — same retailer, same category, same rate. We have no financial reason to prefer either answer, including the answer "buy neither".
That is worth stating because of who else ranks for those searches. A large share of the "X versus Y" pages at the top of Google are published by companies that manufacture and sell one of the two options. Their comparison is an advertisement with a table in it, and their answer is reliably "ours", or occasionally "both, from us". Ours can be "buy one, and here is which", because nothing about our income depends on the answer.
Which programs we are actually in
Amazon Associates, and nothing else at the time of writing. We have joined no CJ advertiser and no Awin program, and — this matters more than it sounds — no link on this site is built for a program we have not joined.
If a brand sells direct and we think that is genuinely the better option for you, we link it as a plain reference link and say that we earn nothing from it. A link we do not earn from is still worth including if it is the right answer.
What we do not accept
- Free products, review units or loans of any kind.
- Sponsored posts, paid placements or paid rankings.
- Payment to remove or soften a negative assessment.
- Display advertising.
If any of that ever changes, this page will change first and the change will be dated. It will not appear quietly at the bottom of an unrelated article.
A note on prices
Prices on this site come from a live data feed refreshed daily, and they expire after 48 hours. When there is no verified live price, the button reads "Check price on Amazon" rather than showing a stale figure. There is no price typed into any page here by hand, and no price is ever remembered, estimated or rounded.
Whatever number Amazon shows you at the moment you click is the real one. If our figure and theirs disagree, theirs is right and ours is out of date.
Why this page exists
US Federal Trade Commission guidance requires that material connections between a publisher and the products it recommends be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. A commission on a sale is exactly such a connection.
So there is a disclosure line in the footer of every page on this site, a short notice above the first affiliate link on any page that carries one, and #ad beneath every buy button. None of it is hidden behind an accordion, and none of it is in gray six-point type. Questions to the contact page.
Common questions
›Does Pan & Provision earn money from its links?
Yes. We participate in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and earn a commission when you buy through a link here, at no extra cost to you. That is the site's only source of income.
›Does commission influence what you recommend?
No, and there is a structural reason it does not need to be taken on trust: on any comparison page both options link to the same retailer at the same commission rate, so we earn the same whichever you choose.
›Do you take free products or sponsorships?
No. No free products, no review units, no loans, no sponsored placements and no payment for a position in a ranking. If that ever changes, this page changes first and the change is dated.
›Which affiliate programs are you in?
Amazon Associates only, at the time of writing. We have not joined any CJ or Awin campaign, and no link on this site is built for a program we have not joined.