What keeps the site running
There is no paywall on this site, no locked newsletter and no premium tier of any kind. Nearly everything we publish is funded by affiliate commissions. When a visitor clicks one of our outbound links, opens an account at a casino and begins playing, the operator may then pay us a referral fee. That fee is taken entirely out of the casino's marketing budget, and not a single cent is added to your deposit, your wagers or the balance you withdraw. Where an operator runs tiered bonus offers, the promotion you pick up via our link is never weaker than what you would get by visiting the casino directly.
Any page on the site carrying affiliate links shows a brief notice near the top which points back here for the full explanation. The outbound buttons also carry a tag that current browsers recognise, in line with widely accepted search-engine and consumer-protection guidance.
Rankings are not for sale
Let us be blunt, because this is the heart of the matter: commission rates have no influence on where an operator sits in our rankings, and the setup makes sure they cannot. Each operator's commercial rate is negotiated just once, and that rate holds whether they top a list of ten, land in last place, or disappear from the table altogether. If a casino falls short on our six-point retests, its spot slides. If a casino has never paid us a cent but the testing supports a listing, it earns that listing.
A few concrete examples show how this works in practice. In several of our markets we have walked away from the highest-paying commission deals on the market because the testing did not justify a spot. As soon as cashouts, terms or support start heading in the wrong direction, we pull the operator and we spell out why. And a slot earned through honest testing cannot be bought back by an operator dangling a higher rate.
Some listed casinos pay us nothing
Being featured on palmy.buzz does not automatically make an operator an affiliate partner. Three distinct types of operator show up in our tables:
- Affiliate partners. A conventional commercial setup, a set referral fee and no sway over scoring whatsoever. This group accounts for most of the list.
- In-house programmes we have skipped. A number of operators run their own affiliate programmes rather than going through a network. Even without signing up, we still include the operator any time the ranking is warranted.
- Networks we steer clear of. There are a handful of networks whose terms we refuse; operators attached only to those networks pay us nothing and still earn a place on sheer merit.
Here is the bottom line: in our internal records, "pays us the most" and "sits at the top of the ranking" are two completely separate columns, and neither has any sway over the other.
What commissions do and do not buy
- We will take a fixed, openly disclosed affiliate commission when a reader signs up through an outbound link.
- We will not swap a ranking spot, a pumped-up score or a kinder verdict for payment.
- We will not publish sponsored articles without disclosure, or present advertorial as if it were an editorial review.
- We will not hold back critical reporting in return for a sweeter rate.
Noticed something on the site that seems to run against any of the above? Send a note to hello@palmy.buzz with "Editorial concern" in the subject line. A real person reads every one.