Affiliate disclosure

Last updated: May 28, 2026

This is the page our other pages link to when they explain how Bellwether is paid.” It is the most important legal page on Bellwether, and we have written it to be brutally explicit — because the alternative, the buried-footer disclosure that most affiliate sites use, is exactly the practice this site exists in opposition to.

TL;DR — the plain answer

Bellwether’s revenue comes primarily from KalshiSpy — an independent, paid third-party trader-analytics and copy-trading tool we link to via /go/kalshi. If you subscribe to KalshiSpy, we may earn a referral commission. We do not earn anything when you open an account directly with a prediction-market platform such as Kalshi or Polymarket, and we are not operated by or affiliated with any of them. You pay nothing extra, and what we earn never changes which platforms or tools we recommend or how we cover them.

The full list of programs, the editorial firewall, and the reasoning are below.

Which links are affiliate links

Our outbound links route through /go/. Here is exactly what each one is — and which one actually pays us:

/go/kalshi → KalshiSpy, an independent paid copy-trading/analytics tool — this is the one link we actually earn a referral from. It is not Kalshi itself.
/go/polymarket → Polymarket’s own site (a convenience link; not currently a paid referral).
/go/robinhood → retired; we no longer link to Robinhood.

If a link does not start with /go/, it is not an affiliate link. We do not embed undisclosed affiliate tracking inside in-text editorial links. The /go/ convention exists so you can see, at a glance — by hovering — exactly where an outbound link goes. Right now only /go/kalshi (KalshiSpy) earns us a referral; the platform links are convenience links we don’t currently earn from.

The full list of partners

We currently earn a referral commission from one partner:

Partner	What it is	How we’re paid
KalshiSpy	Independent paid copy-trading / trader-analytics tool — not a prediction-market platform, and not Kalshi	Referral commission if you subscribe

The platform links (Polymarket, Kalshi, Robinhood) elsewhere on the site are convenience links — they point to those companies’ own sites, and we do not currently earn a commission from them.

That is the complete list as of the date at the top of this page. If we add a program, we will update this page within fourteen days. If we remove one, same.

You pay nothing extra

This is the question most readers actually have. The answer is no. Affiliate commissions are paid by the platform to us, out of their marketing budget — not by you. The price, the fee schedule, the bonus, and the terms are identical whether you arrive at Kalshi via our /go/kalshi link or by typing kalshi.com directly into your browser.

In some cases — Polymarket’s Dub Partners flow, for example — you actually get a better bonus by using our link than by signing up without a referral. We document that explicitly on the relevant guide pages where it is true.

The editorial firewall

The commission does not change how we cover a platform. We say this on every page that contains an affiliate link, and we mean it.

The behavioral evidence:

We have published less favorable analysis of platforms we earn commission from when the product genuinely earned that analysis — see, for example, the Android-app caveats in our Polymarket safety guide.
We have published favorable analysis of platforms we earn nothing from — PredictIt, for example, where we link to the platform editorially without a /go/ link because no affiliate program exists.
Our editor (Dana Okafor) makes editorial calls; the commercial decisions are documented separately. When the two disagree — when a partner manager wants a softer review, for example — the editorial decision is the one that ships.
We will publicly reverse a verdict if the underlying facts change. The reverse-the-verdict test is in our internal editorial standards: if our recommendation no longer reflects the best honest answer for a reader, we change the recommendation, even if it costs us money.

The simpler version: the commission does not buy a verdict. We would rather lose the commission than lose the reader’s trust, because the latter ends the business and the former is a line item.

How we handle conflicts of interest

When a clear conflict of interest could shape coverage, we name it inside the relevant page. Examples that would qualify:

A partner program offers us a one-off marketing bonus tied to a specific piece of coverage. We would refuse it. If a similar offer ever shaped our coverage in the past — it has not — we would publish a correction.
An editor (Avery, Dana, or Marcus) holds a meaningful personal trading position on a platform we are reviewing. The editor avoids holding more than a small position in any platform under active review; if a position becomes meaningful, it is disclosed in that piece.
A partner asks for changes to a published review in exchange for continued partnership. We refuse and document the request.

If you believe a piece of coverage on Bellwether has been shaped by a financial relationship in a way we have not disclosed, please email hello@bellwether.market. We will investigate and publish a correction if warranted.

Per-page disclosure

Every Bellwether page that contains an affiliate link displays a visible disclosure near the link itself — not buried in a footer. The standard wording is now a variant of: “We may earn from trader tools we recommend (like KalshiSpy) — not from platform signups.” Learn more. Trading event contracts involves risk of loss — nothing on this site is financial advice.

That disclosure appears within the same viewport as the link. Our brand standards require this — it is one of the six brand values we operate against, not a courtesy.

Why we accept affiliate revenue at all

This is the question we’d want to ask if we were the reader. The honest answer:

We picked affiliate revenue over the available alternatives because it lets us write what we actually think.

The alternatives we considered:

Sponsored content / paid placement. Lets a platform pay to be ranked higher. Corrupts the editorial calculus directly. Rejected.
Display advertising. Pollutes the reading experience with retargeting pixels and ad networks. Loads slowly. Pays poorly. Misaligned with the audience. Rejected.
VC funding for a “media business.” Means optimizing for growth metrics and exit multiples instead of the reader. Means eventual pressure to expand into categories we don’t believe in. Rejected.
Reader subscription. Plausible long-term option but premature for a young publication. Most prediction-market readers haven’t built the trust with us yet to pay for a subscription, and we’d rather earn that trust first.
Affiliate commissions, with a brutally explicit firewall. Lets the platforms — who already spend on user acquisition — fund the editorial work. Aligns our incentive with the reader’s success: we want you to actually use the platform productively, because that’s what builds the long-term relationship.

The affiliate model has real risks of corruption. We have built operating practices around the firewall — public disclosure on every page, named partners on this page, willingness to publish negative coverage of partners — because we understand the risk and intend to operate above it.

If we ever fail that standard, we expect a reader to call it out. Email hello@bellwether.market if you see it happen.

FTC compliance

This disclosure is provided in compliance with the United States Federal Trade Commission’s guidelines on the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising (16 CFR Part 255). The FTC requires that material connections between endorsers and advertisers — including affiliate-commission relationships — be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. We disclose at the point of every affiliate link, and at length on this dedicated page.

Contact

Questions about this disclosure, or about a specific piece of coverage: hello@bellwether.market

Where to go next

Are prediction markets legal in the US? — the federal-vs-state regulatory picture.
State-by-state legal guides — California, Texas, Florida, and more.

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Bellwether — bellwether.market · Editor: Dana Okafor · Last updated: May 28, 2026.