Our affiliate stance

Drop earns a small commission if you buy a product through one of our links. We disclose this every time — inline beside every retailer link, in the app and on this site, and on this page.

We don’t pay for reviews, and we don’t hide the unhappy ones.

We never choose a product by which affiliate program pays us more. Three rules keep this honest:

• Maximum three suggestions on any screen that makes one. We will not pad the list to show more affiliate links.
• Ranking ignores commission rate. The sort order is deterministic and reviewable — commission is not an input.
• If your routine does not need anything, we say so. The most common Drop answer is “your routine is doing the job.” A “no recommendation” result earns us zero — and that is fine.

Evidence — the published sources behind an ingredient — decides what we say about a product, and never changes because a link exists.

We surface the disclosure in three places so you never have to dig for it:

• Inline on every product card— a short line on the card itself: “Drop earns a small commission if you buy through these links. Commission never changes what we recommend.”
• Beside every retailer link— on the buy sheet in the app and the “where to get it” block on this site. Where an Amazon link appears, Amazon’s own required sentence (“As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”) appears with it.
• On this page, with the full stance.

Affiliate links exist only where you have already decided to buy: the app’s buy sheet, and the product pages reached from shared wishlists and empties on this site — always disclosed next to the links. Everything you read — shared routines and shelves, profiles, articles, the ingredient encyclopedia, Rate my routine and Check products together — carry no affiliate links, ever. The one other place is Products of the month, a separate page that lists a monthly selection of Amazon products and says at the top that its links are affiliate links. Links carry no paid placement — brands cannot pay to be there; where two links are otherwise equal, the one that pays Drop more may come first.

Apart from Products of the month, this is the only place a retailer link appears — in the app’s buy sheet, and in the same block on a shared product page. It opens after Drop has said whether you need the product at all. The rows below are an example with no live links; the retailer names are illustrative until each program is active.

What a reviewer should notice: the retailer is named, not the network; a price appears only when a partner feed supplies it, dated; rows order by price, then partner tier, commission only breaking a tie; and the disclosure sits inside the block, beside the links, not in a footer. The app shows at most three rows, and only for a product the user’s own shelf or wishlist created a need for.

Drop is a new publisher, and links appear only once a program accepts us. Where we stand as of the date at the foot of this page:

• Awin — the network behind retailers such as Dermstore, LookFantastic, The Ordinary and Stylevana. Network approved. Stylevana has accepted us and its links are live; other applications are still under review, and some have been declined.
• impact.com — the network behind Ulta (and, later, Sephora). Our application was declined. We may apply again after launch.
• CJ Affiliate — the network behind Paula’s Choice, Walgreens and the L’Oréal dermatological brands. Applying closer to launch.
• Amazon Associates — our first application was declined because our links did not show our tracking ID. We fixed that and have asked Amazon to review it again. Our Amazon links are on Products of the month, and Amazon’s required sentence (“As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”) appears wherever an Amazon link does. The app is added only after Amazon’s separate mobile-app approval.
• Select brand-direct programs, where a brand runs its own.

Every link we use is a static, per-product link that is identical for every user: no identifier, cookie, script or other data about you travels with it. We do not use networks whose integration requires running their code inside Drop.

When we add a new program, we update this page and name the new program in the disclosure line beside the links. We do not run sponsored placements, paid editorial, or advertorial content. We do not sell user data. (See our privacy stance for the full list of things we do not do.)

Drop is free to use. You never need to buy anything we recommend. The most useful answer Drop can give you is often that the routine you already have is doing the job — and we say so. If a product on your shelf works, keep it. If a drugstore option matches the active ingredient at the same concentration, we surface it alongside the premium one.

If you spot a recommendation that looks like it favours commission over fit, please tell us. The inline disclosure and the ranking rules above are load-bearing for us — getting them wrong is the failure mode we care about most.