Welcome HifiGo As Exclusive Sponsor Of audioreviews.org
HifiGo are a Chinese seller of audio products that rhymes on “No”. No…like…we never wanted to be a commercial blog. We six (formerly eight) analyze portable audio as as a hobby and have done this for over three years. We don’t participate in affiliate programs for the obvious reasons – and we don’t write “honest reviews in exchange of…whatever”. We simply don’t do blabla but cut to the chase.
And we keep it like that.
However, running a blog costs money….web hosting, domain name, and also postage (“Head-Fi tours” etc.), and sometimes import/brokerage fees (“DHL, Fedex etc. are self indulgent”). PayPal does not seem to work for us – no “donations” coming in. So we (or rather I) decided to get a single, exclusive sponsor to support our website costs….and nothing more. In fact, the compensation received will NOT be enough to cover our shipping/import fees.
And we were picky in our choice. HifiGo are a reputable company that have proven reliable as mediator in warranty issues and have been fully transparent in the past. Our relationship has built on 2-3 years of loose collaboration. Earlier, HifiGo had sent us review units, but this burden has shifted to the manufacturers. Lately we did not receive any review “samples” from HifiGo.
But even if we did, would it affect our reviews? Well, I am the guy who has carried the site’s cost alone, so I will be the sole “beneficiary”. The money will underlie proper taxation. But we are six reviewers, five of which remain unaffected by this. So, in the worst case scenario, there will be only one bad apple: me!
As for HifiGo…they have the benefit of not being crammed in between a mass of other ads. We appreciate them as our exclusive partner.
This means for audioreviews.org: despite this one ad, we will remain non-commercial as we do not even break even in the big picture.
And what’s in it for you? You won’t have any interruptions in your reading flow…no invasive ads in the text, no nasty popups, and not that annoying garbage when attempting to load a new page. ALSO: very fast page load times. Our front page takes about 1 s to load completely, comparable sites up to 9 s (check for yourself: https://gtmetrix.com).
In summary, this cooperation is a win-win-win situation. What else do we want?
Until next time…keep on listening!
