Affiliate disclosure

DroneGearSetup.com is funded entirely by affiliate commission. When you buy a product through a link on this site, the retailer pays us a percentage of the sale, and you pay exactly what you would have paid arriving at the same page any other way. That is the whole business model. There is no subscription, no paywall, no sponsored content and nothing for sale directly.

The formal statement

DroneGearSetup.com 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. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.

This disclosure is made in accordance with United States Federal Trade Commission guidance on the disclosure of material connections in endorsements and testimonials. It appears here in full, and a short version appears on every page of this site that carries a product link, in the footer and directly beneath the product cards themselves.

What an affiliate link actually is

An affiliate link is an ordinary link to a retailer's product page with a tracking parameter attached. When you click it, the retailer records that the visit came from this site. If you then buy something within the retailer's attribution window, a commission is credited to us out of the retailer's own margin.

Three consequences follow, and all three are worth knowing.

Your price does not change. The commission is not a surcharge, it is a marketing cost the retailer already budgets for. You are not paying more for using the link and you are not getting a discount by avoiding it.

Attribution is broad. On most programs, if you click a link here and then buy something else entirely from that retailer within the window, we may still earn a commission on it. That is how these programs work everywhere and it is not something we control.

We do not see who you are. Affiliate reporting shows aggregate figures such as items ordered and totals earned. It does not tell us your name, your address, your payment details or anything else about you as an individual.

Which links are affiliate links

Product links are. Every product name, product image, product card and buy button on this site is an affiliate link. Where a product has no verified listing, the link goes to a scoped search at the retailer rather than to a manufacturer's own site, and the page says so where the distinction matters.

Official sources are not. Links to the FAA, to government publications and to other regulatory sources carry no tracking parameter and earn nothing. This is a deliberate rule: a citation to the authority governing your legal obligations should never be monetized, because the moment it is, a reader has a reason to wonder why it was cited.

Internal links are not. Links between pages on this site are ordinary navigation.

Retailer legal and help pages are not. Where we link to a retailer's own privacy or program disclosure, those links carry no affiliate parameter, because they are required disclosures rather than buy paths.

The bias this creates, and what we do about it

Commission scales with price. That means an affiliate site has a structural incentive to recommend the most expensive thing in every category, and asking you to simply trust that we resist it would be worth very little. So here, instead, is how the site is built against it.

Every build guide has a "what to skip" section. Not a token one. The starter build tells you not to buy a hard case, a power station or ND filters yet, and names the specific products it is telling you not to buy. Those are all items we would earn on.

The upgrade advice points at cheap things. The starter build's upgrade order is a third battery, then filters, then a screen controller, and only then a new aircraft. That is the honest order and it is the opposite of what maximises revenue.

Several roundups pick the cheapest option. Where the cheapest thing in a category is the right answer, it wins, and the page says why the expensive alternatives are not worth the difference for most readers.

Some pages recommend buying nothing. Field charging is described as unnecessary until a session runs past about three hours. Thermal payloads, hard cases and high-end goggles are all explicitly described as purchases most readers should not make yet.

Prices are labelled as approximate everywhere. We would rather you check a live price and find it has moved than trust a number that flatters a build total.

What we do not do

We do not accept payment for placement on a list. We do not publish sponsored posts. We do not give manufacturers editorial input, advance review of pages, or the ability to remove criticism. We do not run pop-ups, interstitials or countdown timers, and we do not invent scarcity. And we do not claim hands-on testing we have not done, which is stated on every page and explained in full on the about page.

If any of that changes, the change will be disclosed on the affected page in the same size type as the surrounding text. A disclosure that has to be hunted for is not a disclosure.

Prices, availability and accuracy

Every price shown on this site was the observed retail listing at the time the page was written. Drone pricing moves constantly, particularly around new model announcements and seasonal promotions, and swings of hundreds of dollars on the same aircraft are routine. Build totals are computed from those figures and are planning numbers rather than quotes.

Product availability changes too, and a listing that was live when a page was written may later be discontinued or replaced. Where that happens, the link may resolve to a search at the retailer rather than to the original product. Tell us through the contact page if you find one so it can be fixed.

Search links, and why some buttons say "find comparable"

Most product links here go to a specific verified listing. A few go to a scoped search at the retailer instead, and where that happens the page says so rather than pretending otherwise.

There are two reasons a search link is used. The first is that a product is sold direct by its manufacturer and the retailer does not stock it, in which case the honest option is a search for the category rather than a link to a brand page that earns nothing and helps nobody. The second is that a listing has been discontinued or replaced, which happens constantly with drone accessories, and a search finds the current equivalent where a dead link would find nothing.

What we will not do is send you to a manufacturer's own site while implying it is a buy path we stand behind. Either the link is monetized and disclosed, or the product name is plain text and you can search for it yourself. Both are honest; a bare link that quietly earns nothing while looking like a recommendation is the pattern this site avoids on purpose.

If you would rather not use the links

That is completely fine and the site works the same either way. Every product on this site is named in full precisely so that you can search for it yourself, and nothing is hidden behind a link. The research, the build totals, the calculators and the rules pages are free to read regardless of whether anyone ever clicks a buy button.

If you have found the site useful and want to support it, using a link when you were going to buy the item anyway costs you nothing and is the entire mechanism keeping it online. If you would rather not, no part of the site is withheld from you.

Related: the privacy policy covers what data the site collects, the disclaimer covers the limits of the advice here, and the terms of service covers use of the site itself.