How BodyHackGuide makes money
Every revenue stream, broken out with percentage ranges and the exact transaction flow. No hidden markups, no pay-for-placement editorial, and no black-box rankings. If this page ever goes out of date, we're violating our own policy.
Last reviewed: April 24, 2026 · For the formal FTC disclosure see /affiliate-disclosure. For how vendor scoring works see /vendors/methodology.
TL;DR
Roughly half of our revenue comes from third-party vendor affiliate commissions (vendor pays us, you pay the same price either way). Roughly a third comes from our own supplement brand Adera. The rest splits between bloodwork partner referrals and direct 1-on-1 coaching. No third-party display ads, no paid placement in editorial content, no markup on vendor prices. Vendor Trust Scores are deterministic and cannot be purchased — see the published rubric.
Third-party vendor affiliates
50–60%
Adera in-house supplement line
30–40%
Bloodwork partner referrals (Anabolic Insights)
3–7%
1-on-1 coaching services
2–5%
The four revenue streams
Each stream below lists what it is, who actually pays, whether it can affect editorial decisions, and where the commercial relationship is disclosed on the site. The "Affects editorial" pill is the one a reader should focus on first.
Third-party vendor affiliates
50–60% of revenueEditorial impact: NoA commission paid by a vendor (not by you) when a purchase is attributed to a click from BodyHackGuide.
What it is
We enroll in vendor affiliate programs. When you click a tracked link on a compound page, comparison table, or vendor hub and later buy something, the vendor pays us a small percentage of that order — typically 5–15%. You pay the vendor's listed price. The commission is a marketing cost the vendor was paying to someone anyway.
Who actually pays
The vendor. You never pay more because an affiliate link is tracked; in many cases, affiliate-tracked links are paired with a small discount code that lowers your price.
Where the relationship is disclosed
Every outbound link that is affiliate-tracked carries rel="sponsored" on the HTML tag (per Google's webmaster guidelines) and ships with an external-link icon so it is visually distinguishable from editorial links. Comparison tables label sponsored placement explicitly.
Examples on the site
- •Optimum Formula — research peptides and compounds
- •Research Chem HQ — research peptides and compounds
- •V&L Labs — research peptides and compounds
- •Additional partner vendors listed on /vendors
Adera in-house supplement line
30–40% of revenueEditorial impact: DisclosedRevenue from our own supplement brand — a direct material connection, not a third-party affiliate relationship.
What it is
Adera (aderastate.com) is BodyHackGuide's in-house nasal-spray and supplement brand. When you buy from Adera, 100% of the gross revenue flows to the same operation that funds this site. This is a direct ownership relationship — not a commission, not an affiliate deal. It is the single largest material connection we have, and it is disclosed on every Adera placement.
Who actually pays
You pay Adera directly at Adera's listed price. There is no BodyHackGuide markup — the same product is the same price whether you arrive via this site, Adera's own URL, or an external ad.
Where the relationship is disclosed
Every Adera product callout uses an explicit 'In-house product' or 'From our supplement line' badge. On the vendor directory and comparison tables, Adera is scored by the same Trust Score rubric as every third-party competitor — see /vendors/methodology.
Examples on the site
- •Adera nasal sprays (BPC-157, Selank, Dream Spray, etc.)
- •Adera transdermal creams
- •Adera performance pouches
- •Any page linking to aderastate.com with the 'From our supplement line' badge
Bloodwork partner referrals (Anabolic Insights)
3–7% of revenueEditorial impact: NoA referral fee when you order lab panels through our partner link or use our discount code.
What it is
We partner with Anabolic Insights (anabolicinsights.ai) for hormone, metabolic, and athletic bloodwork panels. When an order lands through our link or with our discount code, we earn a referral fee. The discount code also reduces your price — so the same click simultaneously lowers your cost and credits us.
Who actually pays
Anabolic Insights pays the referral fee out of their marketing budget. You pay Anabolic Insights's price, typically lower than walking into a commercial lab.
Where the relationship is disclosed
All Anabolic Insights links on this site carry rel="sponsored". The discount code CHONCH is labeled as a referral code on every placement, and the bloodwork tool page discloses the partnership in the first paragraph.
Examples on the site
- •The /tools/bloodwork analyzer with the Anabolic Insights integration
- •Any blog post that links to anabolicinsights.ai with the CHONCH code
- •Bloodwork guide crosslinks
1-on-1 coaching services
2–5% of revenueEditorial impact: NoDirect-pay consultations booked through /coaching. Not advice; education.
What it is
Paid 1-on-1 sessions where users can book personalized consultations on compound protocols, goal-setting, and biohacking strategy. Revenue supports both the platform and the coach(es) involved.
Who actually pays
You pay per session at the rate listed on /coaching. This is a direct consumer-to-BodyHackGuide transaction — no affiliate intermediary, no hidden fees.
Where the relationship is disclosed
The coaching offering is listed in the site navigation and on /coaching. Coaching content is educational and does not constitute medical advice; this is stated on the booking page and in any outbound confirmation emails.
Examples on the site
- •Booking a 1-on-1 through the /coaching page
- •Any follow-up session fees negotiated directly
Material connection disclosure: Adera
Adera (aderastate.com) is BodyHackGuide's in-house supplement and nasal-spray brand. When you buy from Adera, 100% of the revenue flows to the same operation that runs this site. This is a direct ownership relationship, not a third-party affiliate program, and it is the largest single material connection we have.
Every Adera placement on the site carries an explicit "in-house product" or "from our supplement line" badge. Adera is still scored by the same Trust Score rubric as every third-party competitor — the scoring function does not know which vendor it is scoring. See /vendors/methodology for the full rubric.
We disclose this connection because the FTC requires it (16 CFR Part 255 §1.5) and because the readership deserves to know which recommendation is an arm's-length affiliate and which is a sibling operation. If a reader sees a compound page, a blog post, or a comparison table that mentions Adera without a badge — that is a bug, and we'll fix it the day it's reported.
What happens when you click a sponsored link
The exact sequence from the click on a BodyHackGuide comparison table to the commission landing in our account. Six steps. No black boxes.
You click a sponsored link on BodyHackGuide
The HTML href includes rel="sponsored" (and our internal UTM tag). Your browser is redirected to the vendor's storefront with a tracking parameter the vendor's affiliate platform recognizes.
The vendor's affiliate platform drops a cookie in your browser
This is a 30-to-90-day cookie — if you buy within that window, the order is attributed to BodyHackGuide. No personally identifying information is sent to us at this step; we only see an anonymized click event.
You browse the vendor's site at their listed prices
The prices on the vendor's site are exactly what you'd see if you arrived by typing the URL directly. There is no BodyHackGuide-specific markup, no inflated list price, no hidden fee.
If you buy, the vendor's affiliate platform credits BodyHackGuide
The vendor pays a commission — typically 5–15% of the order total, set by the vendor. This commission comes out of the vendor's marketing budget. It is not added to your price.
We receive an aggregated report once a month
Every month we get a report that says 'X orders generated $Y in commission'. We never see individual customer names, addresses, or shipping data. That data stays with the vendor.
Commission is paid 30–90 days after the order (vendor-dependent)
Payment timing varies. A typical net-60 schedule means commission earned in March clears to us in May. Refunded orders reverse the commission — we do not earn when a customer returns a product.
What you pay vs. what the vendor pays us
A common misconception about affiliate marketing is that the commission comes out of the customer's price. It doesn't. Here's what each side pays on a typical $100 peptide order through a tracked link.
| Line item | What you pay | What the vendor gets | What we get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product (list price) | $100.00 | $100.00 | $0.00 |
| Affiliate commission (10% typical) | $0.00 | −$10.00 | +$10.00 |
| Your total cost | $100.00 | $90.00 net | $10.00 |
The $10 commission comes out of the vendor's marketing budget. If the vendor weren't running an affiliate program they'd be spending that $10 on Google Ads, Instagram placement, or influencer fees instead — same cost of customer acquisition, different channel. You pay $100 either way.
What we deliberately don't do
These are commitments, not marketing copy. If we ever violate any of them, we'll ship a public-facing fix and document the incident in the changelog below.
We do not mark up vendor prices
The price you see on the vendor's storefront is the price the vendor charges. We do not interpose a middleman markup, a 'BodyHackGuide convenience fee', or any other price layer.
We do not accept pay-for-placement in editorial content
Compound profiles, research articles, blog posts, and guides are developed independently. No vendor can purchase a mention in a compound's 'Best protocols' section, a blog post's bullet list, or a glossary entry. Sponsored ink stays on sponsored surfaces (comparison tables, vendor hubs, the dedicated deals page).
We do not let commercial relationships change Trust Scores
Vendor Trust Scores are computed by a deterministic formula from public inputs — see the full rubric at /vendors/methodology. No amount of affiliate commission, partnership, or cross-promotion adjusts the number.
We do not sell or rent user data
We do not sell email lists, behavioral data, or identity graphs to vendors, marketers, or third parties. Our privacy policy at /privacy covers the narrow analytics we do run (page-level aggregate counts, no PII export).
We do not run third-party display ads
No Google Ads, no programmatic banners, no pop-up ads, no ad-tracking networks. The only commercial surface on the site is our own curated affiliate placements and Adera product callouts — both explicitly labeled.
We do not gate essential research tools behind a paywall
Every calculator (reconstitution, dosage, half-life, intranasal, cost), every compound profile, every comparison table, and every guide is free. The business model works without paywalling tools — and requiring a credit card to check peptide math would be a betrayal of the readership.
We do not promote vendors that fail our rubric for payoff reasons
If a vendor fails our Trust Score rubric they fail — even if they're willing to pay. We have turned down multi-thousand-dollar monthly affiliate offers from vendors whose COA trail did not hold up. The published rubric is the filter.
We do not hide the commercial relationship on Adera
Adera is our in-house brand. Every page that mentions Adera carries an explicit 'in-house' or 'from our supplement line' badge. When Adera is scored on the vendor scorecard, the scoring function treats it identically to every other vendor — no boost for being us.
Which disclosure page covers what
We separate the disclosure documents so each one has a single job. If you're trying to find something specific, this map points you at the right page.
/how-we-make-money (this page)
The plain-English breakdown: where every dollar comes from, what percentage each stream contributes, the transaction flow, and the concrete commitments. Read this if you want to understand the business model.
/affiliate-disclosure
The formal 16 CFR Part 255 disclosure statement. Shorter, lawyer-reviewable, linked from every page footer. Read this if you want the legally-binding version.
/vendors/methodology
The 0-100 Trust Score rubric. Read this if you want to know how vendor scores are computed and whether a commercial relationship can move them (it can't).
/editorial-standards
How research, fact-checking, and content updates are done on this site. Read this if you want to know how the non-commercial side of the operation runs.
/privacy
What data we collect, what we do with it, and what we never do with it. Read this if you want the data side of the transparency story.
FTC 16 CFR Part 255 compliance statement
BodyHackGuide complies with the Federal Trade Commission's Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (16 CFR Part 255). Material connections between BodyHackGuide and any vendor or product mentioned on this site are disclosed on the specific surface where the recommendation appears, and comprehensively on /affiliate-disclosure.
Specifically: affiliate-tracked links carry rel="sponsored" per Google's webmaster guidelines and are visually distinguishable from editorial links. Our in-house brand Adera is labeled with an explicit ownership badge on every placement. Bloodwork and coaching partnerships are disclosed in the first paragraph of the relevant tool or service page. Sponsored commentary in any form (if ever undertaken) is labeled at the point of commentary.
If you are a regulator, journalist, or researcher and need additional audit-trail documentation (complete affiliate partner list, commission rate ranges by category, disclosure-labeling deploy history), email support@bodyhackguide.co and we will provide a response in writing.
Revenue-transparency FAQ
Does BodyHackGuide make more money when I click a link than when I don't?
Yes — that's how affiliate marketing works. But we only earn if you actually buy, and the commission is paid by the vendor out of their marketing budget, not added to your price. If you click and then decide not to buy, nothing happens; we have no incentive to push you into a purchase you don't want. The monetary incentive is to send qualified clicks to vendors that convert — which requires those vendors to actually deliver quality product, which requires us to recommend the right ones.
Do you get paid even if I return the product?
No. Refunded orders reverse the commission — every major affiliate platform automatically claws back commission when an order is refunded. A vendor that ships low-quality product and gets a lot of returns will be unprofitable for us, which is one of the structural reasons our financial interest and your interest point in the same direction.
How do I tell whether a link on the site is affiliate-tracked or not?
All affiliate links carry rel="sponsored" (which you can see by inspecting the HTML) and are rendered with an external-link icon. Research links (PubMed, ClinicalTrials.gov, government agencies) are unmarked because they carry no commercial relationship. In comparison tables, vendor names and 'Buy' buttons are the sponsored surface; compound names and protocol text are editorial.
Is Adera ranked higher than competitors because it's your own brand?
No. Adera is scored on the same five-criterion rubric as every other vendor — see /vendors/methodology. If Adera passes more criteria than a competitor, Adera ranks higher. If Adera fails a criterion (it has, historically, on listing depth while the catalog was small), Adera ranks lower. The ownership relationship is disclosed on every Adera callout; the scoring is blind to it.
Why publish percentage ranges instead of exact dollar figures?
Two reasons. First, publishing exact monthly revenue would expose individual vendor commercial terms — which we are contractually prevented from disclosing. Second, the order-of-magnitude answer is what most readers want: is this business mostly affiliate, mostly in-house, or some mix? Ranges convey that cleanly. If we ever move to a model where individual vendor terms are genuinely public (flat rate cards), we'll publish exact numbers.
What happens if a vendor I see on the site tries to pay for a better review?
Declined, and documented. We have turned down explicit offers for paid placement in compound 'Best of' sections, for score adjustments, and for removing competitor comparisons. If it happens we add it to a transparency changelog (planned). The published Trust Score rubric is the filter; if a vendor fails the rubric, they fail — regardless of payment offer.
Do you share which vendors pay the highest commission rates?
Not by vendor (those terms are confidential per vendor contract). But we can say in aggregate: commission rates vary from roughly 3% to 15% across our partner set. The vendors with the highest rates are not always the vendors who appear first on the comparison table — sort order is price-per-mg by default, which is driven by the actual price the vendor lists, not by what they pay us.
What is your policy on gifts, trips, or free product from vendors?
Free product sent for review is disclosed in the review. Paid sponsored content (trips, paid appearances) is not something we currently do; if we ever did, it would be labeled as sponsored in the content itself, not buried in a footer. The tl;dr: anything of commercial value we receive that ties to a specific piece of content gets an explicit label on that content.
Is this page the legal disclosure required by the FTC?
This page is the plain-English disclosure. The formal 16 CFR Part 255 disclosure statement lives at /affiliate-disclosure (linked in the footer on every page) for regulators who want the short version. Both are accurate; both are kept in sync. If a regulator or journalist needs the audit-trail version, point them at /affiliate-disclosure. If you want to understand the business, read this page.
Where can I report a concern about a disclosure or a placement?
Email support@bodyhackguide.co with the page URL and the specific concern. If it is a disclosure oversight (missing 'sponsored' tag, unlabeled Adera callout, editorial content that should be tagged commercial), we will fix it the same day and note it in the changelog on this page. If it is a dispute about methodology, the next step is a reasoned response on /vendors/methodology.
Revenue-page changelog
- →Published full revenue-stream breakdown at /how-we-make-money (this page).
- →Paired with /vendors/methodology (same release) to separate revenue transparency from scoring transparency.
- →Existing /affiliate-disclosure retained as the formal 16 CFR Part 255 statement.
- →No change to underlying commercial relationships — purely a transparency release.
See the Trust Score rubric (the other half of the transparency story)
Revenue transparency covers how the money flows. Trust Score methodology covers how vendor rankings are computed — and why commercial relationships cannot move them.
Affiliate Disclosure
The formal 16 CFR Part 255 statement. Shorter, stable, footer-linked.
Editorial Standards
How research, fact-checking, and content updates are done on the non-commercial side.
Privacy Policy
What data we collect, how we use it, and what we never do with it.
Independent researcher and founder of BodyHackGuide. Obsessed with evidence-based biohacking, peptide science, and nootropic protocols. Every recommendation is backed by PubMed citations and real-world testing.
Revenue transparency v1.0 · Last reviewed April 24, 2026 · Questions: support@bodyhackguide.co