Where the money comes from
There is no paywall on this site, no locked-off newsletter and no premium tier. Nearly everything we publish is funded by affiliate commissions. If a reader opens an account at a casino by following one of our outbound links and starts to play, the operator may send us a referral fee in return. That fee comes out of the casino's own marketing budget — not a cent is tacked onto your deposit, your wagers or the amount you eventually withdraw. When an operator runs more than one welcome offer, the bonus you pick up through our link is never worse than the version waiting for you if you head straight to the casino.
Any page here that carries affiliate links shows a brief notice up top pointing back to this document for the full picture. On top of that, the outbound buttons carry a machine-readable tag that most modern browsers understand, in line with well-known search-engine and consumer-protection guidance.
A ranking is not for sale
We will put this plainly, since it is the heart of the matter: commissions do not factor into where an operator sits in our ranking, and there is no mechanism by which they could. The commercial rate for each operator is settled once, and it stays the same whether that brand tops the leaderboard, sits in the tenth slot or gets dropped from the list altogether. If a casino stumbles in our six-point retests, it slides down. If a casino has never sent us a single payment yet the testing backs a listing, it still gets that listing.
You can see this in a few concrete outcomes. We have walked away from some of the biggest commission offers on the Australian market because our testing did not support a listing. We drop operators the moment payouts, terms or customer support begin sliding, and we spell out the reason on the page. And a slot won through real, hands-on testing cannot be bought back by an operator dangling a bigger cut.
Some listed operators send us zero
Not every casino you see on ausino.biz has an affiliate deal with us. Our shortlist covers three separate groups of operator:
- Affiliate partners. A standard commercial arrangement, a fixed referral fee and no influence on scoring at all. These make up the bulk of the list.
- In-house programmes we have skipped. Some operators run their own affiliate schemes rather than working through a network. Even where we have not signed up with them, we still list the operator whenever the testing says it deserves the place.
- Networks we steer clear of. A handful of affiliate networks come with terms we are not willing to accept; operators tied solely to those networks pay us nothing and still make the cut on merit alone.
The bottom line is straightforward: "pays us the most" and "ranks at the top" sit in two entirely separate columns of our internal records, and neither one ever shapes the other.
What a payment does and does not get you
- We will accept a fixed, clearly disclosed affiliate commission on outbound signups.
- We will not trade a ranking position, an inflated score or a softer verdict for cash.
- We will not run undisclosed sponsored articles or advertorial dressed up as an editorial review.
- We will not suppress critical reporting in exchange for a better rate.
Noticed something on the site that looks like it runs against any of these commitments? Send a note to riley@ausino.biz with "Editorial concern" in the subject line. An actual human being will open it.