Affiliates are a great way to help support the channel, but we also acknowledge the affiliate marketing world has some negative elements.  To explain, many great services use affiliate links to help grow their business.  They acquire customers, their customers receive great products, and platforms such as SwitchedToLinux get some revenue to help support the channel.  This is a win-win-win.  But the underbelly of affiliates is that many services are not particularly good and but succeed through giving high payouts in return for customers.  We have personally seen many products and services succeed through affiliates by giving trumped up reviews simply because the commission return is high.  At SwitchedtoLinux, we only select affiliates we believe in.  We are contacted several times a week from companies wanting to offer us affiliate links, but rather than just signing up, we instead weigh the service, examine it, and make choices.  Sometimes our affiliates let you down.  We want to hear about that, because if it becomes a trend we will re-evaluate a service, but just because one person has had a bad experience does not mean everyone has.  At the end of the day, we do not send business to companies we have not investigated, so hopefully our affiliates will help you fulfill a need and in return, we get some channel support.  We thank you for your support!