How we work
How We Make Money
Every publication that tells you what to do with your money should tell you where its own comes from. This page does that, including the parts that create an incentive we have to work against.
The short version
Advertising and affiliate commissions. Nothing else. Reading this site costs you nothing, we do not have a paywall or a subscription, and we have never taken payment from a company in exchange for coverage.
Affiliate income creates an obvious incentive to tell you to buy things. We think the right response is to say so on a page you can find, and then publish the rules we hold ourselves to, so you can check whether we follow them.
1. Why we publish this at all
The Throttle Times tells people which repairs are worth paying for and which are not. That advice is worth less if you cannot see who is paying us and what that might do to what we say.
Most automotive sites bury this in a footer link or skip it entirely. We would rather set it out, because a reader who understands our incentives can judge our work properly, and because writing the rules down makes them harder for us to quietly abandon later.
2. Where the money comes from
The Throttle Times launched in 2026 and is still early. At present the site earns very little, and the research behind it is funded by KCS Global Group, the company that publishes it. As the site grows, two sources are intended to carry it.
Display advertising
Ads placed on pages by third-party advertising networks. We are paid for impressions and clicks, not for sales, and not for saying anything in particular.
We do not choose which advertisers appear. The network matches ads to the page and to the reader, and we see aggregate reporting afterwards rather than a list of who bought what.
Affiliate commissions
Where we link to a part, tool or product and you buy it, the retailer may pay us a small percentage of the sale. The price you pay is identical either way; the commission comes out of the retailer’s margin.
We participate in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and may join comparable programmes with other retailers. Full detail is in our Affiliate Disclosure.
3. Where the money does not come from
Being specific here is more useful than a general promise of independence.
We have never taken, and will not take:
- Payment for coverage. No manufacturer, dealer, parts brand or repair chain has paid us to write about them, or to write about them favourably.
- Sponsored posts presented as editorial. We do not publish paid articles dressed up as our own research.
- Paid links. We do not sell links in articles, and we decline the requests we receive for them.
- Payment to suppress something. Nobody has paid us to leave a defect, a recall or a criticism off this site, and we would publish the attempt if it were made.
- Payment for a review verdict. No company has paid for a rating, a ranking or a recommendation.
- Money for your data. We do not sell, rent or trade reader information. See our Privacy Policy.
4. The wall between money and editorial
A stated principle is easy. These are the specific rules that make it operate.
- Coverage decisions are made before revenue is considered What we cover is decided by what owners are searching for and what we can document. Whether a topic monetises well is not part of that decision.
- The cheapest answer is stated first If a problem can be fixed for nothing, or with a five dollar part rather than a two hundred dollar assembly, that leads the article. It earns us less. It is still the answer.
- We publish defects regardless of who advertises A documented fault gets reported whether or not the manufacturer buys advertising anywhere near us. Advertising is sold by a network that has no idea what we are writing.
- Commission rates are invisible to writers Our writers and fact-checkers are not given commission data for the products they cover, so it cannot influence a recommendation even unconsciously.
- Any exception gets disclosed on the article If we ever receive a free product, a press loan, travel, or anything else of value connected to something we cover, the article says so in plain language, at the top.
5. What advertising is and is not
Readers often assume an ad beside an article means we endorsed the advertiser. On this site it means the opposite of nothing in particular: we did not choose it and did not know it would be there.
| You might assume | What actually happens |
|---|---|
| We picked this advertiser | An automated network matched the ad to the page and the reader |
| An ad here is an endorsement | It is not. We have no relationship with the advertiser at all |
| Advertisers see articles before publication | They do not, and they have no right of reply beyond our normal corrections process |
| We are paid more for positive coverage | Display revenue depends on impressions, not on what an article concludes |
6. If we ever take sponsorship
We do not currently accept sponsorship or paid partnerships. If that changes as the site grows, three things will be true before anything is published:
- Sponsored content will be labelled as sponsored, at the top, in language nobody could miss
- It will be visually distinct from editorial articles rather than blended into them
- This page will be updated to say who is paying and for what, before the first one appears
A sponsor will never be given influence over an unsponsored article. If that condition cannot be met, we will not take the money.
7. What the money pays for
Revenue funds the work rather than a margin. Seven people work on this site, and the largest cost by far is research time: the hours spent retrieving recall records, reading service bulletins, cross-checking specifications against the right model year, and verifying claims before publication.
| What it funds | Why it costs what it does |
|---|---|
| Research and retrieval | Primary records take time to find, read and match to the right configuration |
| Independent fact-checking | A second person verifying every claim doubles the cost of an article and is the reason we can stand behind it |
| Writing and editing | Turning documents into something an owner can actually use |
| Hosting and infrastructure | Keeping the site fast, secure and available |
| Review and updating | Revisiting published work as recalls, costs and schedules change |
The practical consequence: more revenue means more articles researched properly, not fewer researched faster.
8. What this costs you
Nothing. There is no paywall, no subscription, no registration and no newsletter you have to join to read an article.
If you want to support the work, the two things that help most are reading the articles where they are published and telling us when we get something wrong. Corrections from owners and technicians improve this site more than any amount of advertising revenue does, and our Corrections Policy explains how to send one.
Questions about any of this
If you think an article was shaped by money rather than by evidence, that is worth telling us about more than a factual error is. Write to contact@thethrottletimes.com with the article link and what looks wrong, and it goes to the editor.
Advertising, sponsorship and partnership enquiries go to info@thethrottletimes.com. Our Contact page explains which inbox handles what, and our Editorial Policy sets out the standards behind every article.
KCS Global Group2nd Floor, Shop No. 22, 19/22
Maitri Nagar, Risali – 490006
District Durg, Chhattisgarh, India