1. Category fit
The resource is matched to a public category before commercial terms are considered.
Resource Review Process
How Stride Labs reviews tools, books, platforms, and products before they appear in the public resources area.
Reader value comes before commission
Resource pages can support future affiliate, referral, sponsor, and paid-placement revenue, but a listing should be useful before it is commercial. The review process keeps recommendations separate from source citations and makes disclosure visible before readers act.
This page does not approve any partner, create a listing, quote a price, guarantee traffic, or promise revenue. It explains the standard a resource should meet before it appears on the site.
Manual review. Every resource relationship should be reviewed by category, audience fit, claim support, and disclosure requirements.
No hidden influence. Commercial resources should not secretly shape editorial conclusions, source choices, or article rankings.
No artificial behavior. Partners cannot ask readers to click ads, refresh pages, manipulate traffic, or inflate metrics.
Intake route. Resource pitches should use the resource partner intake brief.
Review criteria
- Reader usefulness: the resource solves a real research, production, publishing, analytics, privacy, or creator-operations problem
- Audience fit: the resource belongs beside faceless explainer videos, companion articles, or small-publisher workflow
- Claim support: performance, privacy, security, revenue, approval, ranking, or workflow claims can be checked against public evidence
- Commercial clarity: affiliate, referral, paid-placement, discount-code, sponsor, or unpaid terms are visible before a link goes live
- Support surface: pricing, help, refund, privacy, security, or terms pages are available when they matter to reader decisions
Automatic rejection signals
- Hidden sponsorship, forced positive coverage, fake discounts, fake scarcity, or undisclosed affiliate terms
- Requests for invalid ad behavior, artificial traffic, forced clicks, paid review manipulation, or ranking guarantees
- Unsupported best, safest, guaranteed, earnings, approval, privacy, or security claims
- Products that do not fit the archive's audience or would confuse editorial sources with paid recommendations
How a resource moves forward
The same review sequence applies to affiliate links, referral paths, paid placements, sponsor-supported listings, discount codes, and unpaid resources.
2. Claim check
Material claims are checked for public support, dated context, and wording that does not overpromise.
3. Disclosure placement
Affiliate, referral, sponsor, discount, paid-placement, or unpaid status is labeled near the listing.
4. Manual decision
The publisher can accept, ask for clarification, defer, or reject the resource without guaranteeing traffic or revenue.
Send a reviewable pitch
Useful resource notes include the public landing page, category fit, audience fit, commercial relationship, claims needing support, required disclosure language, and support or policy links.
Partner guide. Read the resource partner guide before sending a pitch.
Intake brief. Use the resource partner intake brief when details are ready.
Email. Resource review questions can be sent to luketrodriguez1@gmail.com.