Transparency
Affiliate Disclosure
We keep this site free by earning a commission from some — not all — of the products we link to. Here is exactly how that works, and the rules we follow so our recommendations stay honest.
Last updated: June 2026
We may earn a commission — at no cost to you
Some of the links on Self-Employed Lending Hub are affiliate links. If you click one and sign up for or buy a product, we may receive a commission from that company. You never pay more because you used our link — the price is the same whether you go through us or straight to the provider. These commissions help cover the cost of researching products, building our calculators, and keeping the guides on this site free.
Not every link is an affiliate link, and we do not earn anything on most of the outbound resources we mention. When a link is a paid relationship, we mark it with the rel="sponsored" attribute, consistent with FTC guidance and search-engine disclosure standards.
Our recommendations are not for sale
This is the part that matters most: a company cannot pay us to rank higher, look better, or appear in a comparison it does not belong in. Our rankings and "best of" lists are not paid placements. We order products by objective, published criteria — never by which partner pays us the most, or pays us at all.
We explain exactly how we evaluate and order products on our methodology page. If a product is the best fit for a reader, it earns its place whether or not we make a dime from it.
Editorial independence
The team that writes and ranks our content is independent of any commercial relationship. Affiliate partners do not review, approve, or edit our content before it is published. If our honest assessment of a product changes, the content changes — even if that product is a partner. We would rather lose a commission than mislead a reader who is about to make one of the largest financial decisions of their life.
A note on mortgage-related links (RESPA)
Self-Employed Lending Hub covers mortgages for owner-occupied homes, which are consumer mortgage transactions governed by the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA). We take that seriously.
Any compensation we receive in connection with mortgage or settlement-service providers is per-click or per-lead advertising — paid for sending interested readers to a marketplace or lender. It is never contingent on whether a loan actually closes, and we do not accept referral fees, kickbacks, or any payment tied to settlement of a loan. That is a deliberate, structural line we hold to stay on the right side of RESPA Section 8.
Outside of mortgages, the products we recommend — credit monitoring, business banking, bookkeeping, tax software, entity formation, insurance, and retirement tools — are non-settlement services and are not subject to RESPA. Those are the standard affiliate relationships described above.
Questions?
If anything here is unclear, or you want to know whether a specific link is an affiliate link, reach out through our about page. We are happy to explain.