Since your long-term trust is the most valuable thing you can grant me, I want to explain exactly how I make money with Nomad Gate, and how that will and won’t influence my writing. Perhaps I’m taking this transparency thing too far (I’ve yet to see any “advertiser disclosure” page this detailed on any other website), but I think it’s the right thing to do.

I do not charge any membership fees, and I am not planning to either. I am not using Nomad Gate as a way of attracting clients, nor am I planning to. I am not selling ad space.

Instead, I am using the same monetization model as most large websites and blogs covering financial services and digital products, namely affiliate relationships with a subset of the companies and products I write about.

The way this normally works is that once I have written a new article, I search to see if any of the products I’ve mentioned offer an affiliate program. If they do, I will apply. If they accept me, I will use a special link that will let them who signed up for their service after reading my article. If you do, I will get a small commission. The size of the commission really depends on what you sign up for or buy and can range from a few cents to more than €100 in extreme cases. For most things, it’s somewhere between €0.50-€20.

My promise to my readers

I have so far and will in the future only recommend products that I have used and enjoyed myself, or that I believe is the best fit based on thorough research or recommendations from people I trust.

I will never write about a company because they pay me to do so. I don’t currently have any advertising on Nomad Gate (paid or otherwise), but if I do in the future it will be clearly marked as such.

Whether or not I have an affiliate relationship with a company will not influence what I write about them (i.e. if I am being positive or negative), or recommend them in a situation where I do not sincerely believe that they are the best fit. However, I might mention such a company or product more often or in more detail than I would have done otherwise (see the example below). Don’t trust any writer telling you they are not influenced in such a way.

An example

One product I have mentioned regularly since I first wrote my popular article on the best banks around the world for nomads (written & first published in the spring of 2015) is N26 Bank (or Number 26 as they were called then).

I do sincerely believe they are the best option for people seeking a low cost, user-friendly, EUR account with very low costs internationally, and I’ve been using their service myself since 2015. I have had an affiliate relationship with them since 2017. I stand by everything I’ve ever written about them, both before and after we established an affiliate relationship.

But would I have spent all the hours it took me to write a dedicated article on how to open an N26 account if I didn’t get a small referral fee for every customer I refer? Perhaps, but probably not in such great detail. I’ve explained how to open accounts in other banks where I have no affiliate relationship (e.g. LHV and ActivoBank to name two) but in less detail.

This is the maximum extent an affiliate relationship will ever impact my writing.

Current affiliations

So you can see for yourself that I keep my promises, here’s the complete list of every company that paid me more than $50/€50 or equivalent in the past year (updated August 2019):

  • Wise
  • Xolo
  • TorGuard
  • Private Internet Access
  • NordVPN
  • DKB
  • N26 Bank
  • Amazon
  • DigitalOcean
  • Curve
  • World Nomads
  • SafetyWing
  • Bunq

In the same time period, I’ve written about close to (if not more than) 100 different products and companies. The vast majority of these I have no affiliate relationship with.

If you have any questions or comments regarding any of this, just let me know.

And if you’d like to support Nomad Gate financially, you can just use my affiliate links when signing up for any of the products and services mentioned above. It’s much appreciated!

With ❤️,
Thomas

PS! I’ve been thinking of implementing a way for my readers to opt out of affiliate links. I.e. if you opt out, all the affiliate links on Nomad Gate will turn into regular, non-affiliate links for you. If you’re interested in this, let me know. It requires some development, but if it’s a popular request I will prioritize it.