Affiliate disclosure

The short version

Sole & Splay is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. If you buy something after clicking one of our Amazon links, we earn a small commission. It costs you nothing extra — the price is the same as it would be if you had gone to Amazon directly.

That commission is the entire business model. We run no advertising, we publish no sponsored posts, we sell nothing of our own, and we have never been paid by a brand to include, exclude or rank a shoe.

Which links earn us money

• Amazon — Amazon Associates (US). These links carry our tracking tag and are marked #ad at the button.

Which links earn us nothing

Some of the best shoes in this category are sold only by the brand itself, and we are not in an affiliate program with any of them. We link them anyway, and we say so on the button, because the alternative is steering you toward a worse shoe that happens to pay us. Brands we link without earning anything:

• Xero Shoes — plain, untracked link. We earn nothing if you buy.
• Vivobarefoot — plain, untracked link. We earn nothing if you buy.
• Lems Shoes — plain, untracked link. We earn nothing if you buy.
• Be Lenka — plain, untracked link. We earn nothing if you buy.
• Altra Running — plain, untracked link. We earn nothing if you buy.
• Merrell — plain, untracked link. We earn nothing if you buy.
• Vibram — plain, untracked link. We earn nothing if you buy.

If one of those programs is joined in future, this page changes to say so on the same day the link changes. It is generated from the same configuration that builds the links.

What stops the commission deciding the rankings

Saying “commission does not influence our picks” is cheap. Here is the actual mechanism:

1. Products are chosen before links are attached. A roundup is assembled from specifications and fit data. Only then does each pick get a retailer link. Nothing is ever added to a list because of what it pays.
2. We link the cheaper option even when it pays less. Where a shoe is available in more than one place, the reader’s price and availability decide the primary button, not our rate.
3. Non-earning picks stay in. Several shoes on this site pay us zero and are still ranked first in their category, because they are the right answer.
4. No brand relationships exist to protect. We accept no gifted product and no brand has editorial contact with us, so there is nothing to lose by criticizing a shoe.

Prices

We do not publish prices. Every buy button sends you to the live retailer listing so the figure you see is the current one. Prices in this category move constantly and a cached number is worse than no number — so when we have no verified live price, the button simply says “check price” rather than showing you something stale.

What we do with your click

Our outbound product links pass through a redirect on this domain (a /go/ path) which attaches the retailer tracking parameter and forwards you on. It exists so that every link can be updated in one place when a program changes. It sets no cookie of its own and records nothing about you personally. See the privacy policy.

Who we are

Sole & Splay is published by MadGrey LLC. Questions about this disclosure go to contact@soleandsplay.com.

One more thing we are not

We are not a medical resource. Nothing on this site diagnoses or treats a condition, and we do not wear-test the shoes we recommend. The editorial policy sets out exactly what our recommendations are based on.