Funding

This site has no revenue today. None of any kind: no affiliate links, no sponsored placements, no brand partnerships, no display advertising, no paid rankings, no lead-generation forms, no subscriptions, no donations and no products of its own. What pays for it is unrelated work, named below — and if that position ever changes, this page names the arrangement before it goes live.

Roman Sydorenko, Independent analyst · Last verified 30 July 2026 · Disclosures

What pays for it

The operator, out of unrelated work. Roman Sydorenko runs an independent SEO consultancy; that business pays for the hosting and the time. It does not pay for product, because no product was bought — the sources this audit reads are free to open. No brand, manufacturer, contract manufacturer, certifier, trade association or retailer has paid for, reviewed, or seen any page here before publication, and nobody named anywhere on this site was given an opportunity to influence it.

That consultancy is disclosed rather than buried, because it is a real interest: somebody whose living comes from search visibility has an incentive to make a site look authoritative. The author page states that plainly, and answers the obvious question about it: no brand in the audit set has ever been a client of that consultancy.

If this site is ever monetised

No monetisation is planned or in negotiation today. But “we would tell you” is worth nothing unless it says who tells you, what they say, where it appears and when — so here is the commitment, in advance, while there is no money on the table to bend it.

1. The footer line changes first. The site-wide “this site earns nothing” sentence is replaced before the first paid link, placement or subscription goes live — not afterwards.
2. It is logged as a correction. A dated entry in the corrections log quotes the old disclosure verbatim next to the new one, and stays there permanently. The change is discoverable years later by anyone reading the log, without taking our word for the date.
3. This page names the arrangement. Who pays, for what, how much where that is knowable, which pages it touches, and what it does not touch.
4. The disclosure appears on every affected page, in plain text, before the first monetised element — not in the footer, not behind a “Disclosure” button, and repeated next to each link where the first disclosure has scrolled out of view. The same FTC example sets the floor for referral income: a review site that takes no payment for rankings but receives payments from some manufacturers, such as for affiliate link referrals, … should clearly and conspicuously disclose that it receives such payments 16 CFR §255.4(c) Ex. 3 (opens in a new tab) .
5. The ranking method stays published, and the ranking does not move. Nothing that was graded before the money arrives is re-graded after it. The audit cohort is frozen and dated for exactly this reason: a percentage that cannot be silently re-cut cannot be sold.
6. Paid rankings stay out. Selling position in the ranking is deceptive under 16 CFR §255.4(c) whatever it is labelled, so it is not a disclosure question and no disclosure would fix it. Paid placement, sponsored rankings and a seller-paid certification seal fall on the same side of that line. Anything else — referral income, a subscription, a product of our own — is a disclosure question, and points 1 to 5 govern it.

If you ever find a monetised element on this site that is not disclosed by all six of those, that is an error and a serious one. Report it to roman@seobro.com.

What this site does not take

This site takes no product, samples, early access, review units or payment from any manufacturer or retailer, and none has ever been accepted. This is a documentary audit — labels, the NIH label database, issuer registers, archived brand pages and the published literature — so every finding here is reproducible by anyone with a browser. No product was purchased, opened, weighed or cultured, and nothing on this site verifies that a bottle’s contents match the label printed on it. Every cell we could not verify is published as unverified rather than deleted. Every correction is permanent and quotes the original error. If any of that changes, it is dated in the corrections log before it takes effect.

Two of those refusals are worth spelling out, because they are the two that every site in this category quietly breaks.

No free samples, review units, early access or press product

Not from a brand, not from a PR agency, not “with no strings”. Nothing in this audit came from a manufacturer or a retailer — and nothing was bought either, which is the limit stated alongside the refusal rather than behind it. A free bottle is not a small favour in this category — it is the difference between a teardown and a placement, and the reader cannot see which one they are reading.

No paid placement, sponsored content, “featured” slots or brand partnerships

Disclosure does not cure this one, and the FTC says so. Its endorsement guides are explicit: Regardless of whether the website makes express claims of objectivity or independence, such paid-for rankings are deceptive and the website operator is liable for the deception, and A disclosure that the website operator receives payments from headphone manufacturers would be inadequate because the payments actually determine the headphones’ relative rankings 16 CFR §255.4(c) Ex. 3 (opens in a new tab) . A site whose entire product is its ranking cannot lawfully sell positions in it under any label. That is a legal boundary, not an editorial preference — which is why it is stated as one.

Why the disclosure is on every page, and why the rest is in one place

The line at the foot of every page — this site earns nothing, and nothing on it is for sale — is printed there in plain text rather than behind a link to here. That is not a stylistic choice. The FTC’s rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465, effective 21 October 2024, states that in an interactive electronic medium a disclosure must be unavoidable:

A disclosure is not clear and conspicuous if a consumer must take any action, such as clicking on a hyperlink or hovering over an icon, to see it.

16 CFR §465.1(c)(4) (opens in a new tab) — source note 89 FR 68077 (22 August 2024). The civil penalty for a violation is $53,088 (16 CFR §1.98(d); 90 FR 5581, 17 January 2025).

Which means the standard “Affiliate Disclosure” page in a site footer does not satisfy the rule. This page exists to give the detail and the reasoning. It does not carry the disclosure, because a disclosure a reader has to click to reach is not a disclosure.

That rule governs disclosures of a material connection — money, product, a relationship with somebody being reviewed. It is why the funding line at the foot of every page is printed there in plain text and never behind a link. It does not govern a not-medical-advice notice or a clinical-review status, neither of which is a material connection, so those sit in a labelled disclosure block in the same footer whose heading states both facts before it is opened. The moment there is a material connection to disclose, it goes in plain text, on every page that carries it, before the element it applies to — which is commitment 4 under if this site is ever monetised, above.