Editorial policy and fact-checking standards
Who writes this site, how what we publish gets checked, what happens when we are wrong, and where the money comes from.
Who writes this site
The Side Hustle Journal is written and edited by Rachel Chang.
Rachel is a pen name. She writes under it for family privacy, which we would rather tell you than have you discover. Everything published under that byline — every hour logged, every session timed, every withdrawal recorded — is the work of one real person doing the testing herself. The name is private; the work is not.
Plenty of sites in this niche use pen names and do not mention it. Some use stock photographs of people who have never seen the site. We use neither a real name nor a fake face, and we would rather explain why than hope nobody asks.
Where a pen name is not enough
Some subjects need demonstrable credentials rather than demonstrable experience. Our bank bonuses section deals with financial products, taxable income and account terms, and “I tried it and here is what happened” is not sufficient expertise for that. So that section is either written by a named contributor with a relevant financial background, or it is not published. We would rather have a gap than a guess.
How we fact-check
1. Every number traces to a log entry. If a figure appears in prose, it must be re-derivable from the table on the same page. We check this deliberately, because a plausible-sounding statistic is the easiest thing in the world to write and the hardest for a reader to catch.
2. Every third-party claim is sourced. Trustpilot scores, BBB ratings, ownership and company history are cited with the date retrieved.
3. Every platform term is verified against the platform. Minimum cashouts, payout methods, country availability and bonus amounts are checked against current terms, not against memory.
4. Every negative claim about a company is documented before publication. Saying a platform failed to pay is a factual assertion about their conduct. We do not make it without dates, amounts and a record of the support contact.
Corrections
We publish corrections. With dates. On the page where the error was.
You tell us something is wrong, or we notice it ourselves. We check it against the logs and the platform’s current terms. If we were wrong, the page is corrected and the update log records what changed, when, and that it was a correction. If the error was material, that note stays permanently rather than being quietly folded into a routine update.
We do not delete errors and pretend they did not happen. An update log that only ever says “re-tested, no change” is not a log, it is decoration.
Where the money comes from
We earn affiliate commissions. It never costs you anything and never changes your terms. What commissions do not affect: the order of any ranking, any rating or sub-score, which platforms we cover, or which platforms go on our avoid lists.
The check you can run yourself: on most of our rankings, several of the top-placed platforms pay us nothing at all. Full details in our affiliate disclosure.
What we do not accept: paid placements, paid reviews, sponsored rankings, gifted-product reviews, or any arrangement where a company has input into what we publish.
Editorial independence
No advertiser, affiliate network or platform sees our content before it publishes. None has any right of review, approval or veto. We do not send drafts to companies for comment — we check facts against their published terms instead, which is verifiable by you and not negotiable by them.
What we will not publish
- Earnings figures we have not personally achieved
- Get-rich framing, income-claim screenshots, or anything implying online earning is fast or large
- Recommendations for schemes where income depends on recruitment
- Content aimed at readers under 18
- Financial, tax or legal advice