Affiliate Disclosure

This site is free to read and carries no advertising. Some pages link to commercial services instead, and where we hold a commercial arrangement with one of them we may be paid a commission if you use the link and go on to buy — that, rather than advertising, is how this site is meant to pay for itself. You pay no more than you would going direct.

Which links are affiliate links

Two kinds of link appear on this site and it is worth being able to tell them apart.

Citations point to official sources — the statute and the licensing board — so you can check what a page says. Nobody pays for those and nobody could.

Partner links point to commercial services: business formation, exam preparation, insurance. These are the affiliate links, they are labelled where they appear, and they are the ones that may earn a commission.

The rule that matters more than this notice

A disclosure tells you a relationship exists. What protects you is an editorial rule, so here is ours: no commercial relationship changes what a regulatory page says.

In practice that means a few concrete things. Facts come from the statute and the board and are cited, so a partner cannot influence them — the source is on the page and you can check it. Some pages carry no offer at all, because an offer would contradict the page’s own advice: the page on checking somebody else’s license, the page on the criminal exposure of working unlicensed, and the page on the financial condition of licensure. Those exclusions cost us money and they are deliberate.

And where we cannot verify something, the page says so rather than filling the gap with a recommendation. You will find several pages here that decline to state a figure and send you to the board instead. A site optimizing purely for commission would not do that.

What we are not

We are not affiliated with the Contractors State License Board or any state agency, and no partner is either. A partner appearing on this site is not endorsed, approved or licensed by the board, and buying anything from one has no bearing whatsoever on an application.

Nothing here is legal advice, and a partner’s marketing is not advice about your situation either.

Questions

If a link is not clearly labelled, or you think a page reads as though it were written for a partner rather than for you, tell us on the contact page. That is a defect and we would want to fix it.

The pages this applies to begin at the California contractor license overview, and the editorial side of the same question is on about this site.