Editorial policy
Who decides what appears here, on what evidence, and what we will never publish.
Last updated October 2, 2026
Primer & Poise is an independent review publisher funded by affiliate commission. This page sets out how that funding is kept separate from editorial judgment, where our information comes from, and the things we will not do.
Editorial independence
Rankings are not for sale. No brand has paid for a position on this site, been offered one, or been given the opportunity to review a page before publication.
Affiliate relationships never affect position or verdict. Every money link on this site is an Amazon link, so the commission structure is effectively identical across every product we recommend — we earn the same whether you buy the product ranked first or the one ranked last. Where a brand-direct program would pay more, we would still link to whichever option is genuinely better for the buyer.
We earn on clicks that lead to purchases, not on recommendations. That means our interest is in you finding something that works, because a product that disappoints is a reader who does not come back.
No brand has been given product, payment or placement in exchange for coverage, and if that ever changes the page in question will say so prominently.
We will not remove a stated limitation because a brand objects to it. A brand is welcome to tell us something is factually incorrect, and we will check it and correct it if they are right.
Separating commerce from judgment
Three structural facts, because stating the principle is cheap and the structure is what actually constrains us.
Every link goes to the same retailer. With a single affiliate program there is no commission differential to bias a ranking toward. That is partly a limitation of a new site and it is also a genuine safeguard, and it is worth naming as both.
Product selection happens before link-building. Picks are chosen against the criteria on how we choose, and the links are added afterward. A product is never added to a page because it was available to link to.
Pages that cannot honestly recommend a purchase do not. Several guides on this site conclude that the reader should use less of what they already own, change a free habit, or buy nothing — including pages where recommending a product would have been easy and more profitable.
Sourcing standards
Every page lists its sources at the bottom. In order of how much weight we give them:
1. Manufacturer and retailer published information, for facts about formula type, ingredient lists, coverage, finish, SPF and packaging. These are the most reliable sources for what a product physically is.
2. Established beauty and consumer press, for category context and for reported experience of a product on mature skin.
3. Condition-specific organizations, for anything touching arthritis, tremor or low vision. On those subjects an arthritis charity or a low-vision service is a better source than any beauty publisher, including this one, and we cite them rather than paraphrasing them as our own knowledge.
What we never cite as evidence: a brand's performance claim presented as fact. Where a brand states something about its own product — that a formula was tested on mature skin, for instance — the page attributes it to the brand rather than asserting it.
And where we could not verify something, the page says so rather than filling the gap. There are several statements on this site of the form "this could not be verified", and they are deliberate.
How this content is produced
Stated plainly, because readers are entitled to know and because most sites are vague about it.
Content on this site is produced with AI assistance as part of the writing and research process, and a named human — Brijon M. — is accountable for every page. The byline is not decorative: it means a specific person stands behind the recommendation, the stated limitations and the factual claims.
That accountability is the part that matters. AI assistance changes how quickly a page can be researched and drafted; it does not change who is answerable for it, who corrects it when it is wrong, or who decided which product goes first.
What AI assistance does not do here: invent a product, invent a price, invent a review, invent a credential, or decide a ranking. Every product on this site is a real currently-sold item identified in research; every source is a real document; and no page claims testing that did not happen.
If you find something on this site that reads as though nobody checked it, that is a failure worth reporting, and we would rather hear about it.
Updates and review cadence
Every page carries a real last-updated date, and it changes when the page is genuinely reviewed rather than when a script runs.
Product pages are revisited on a rolling basis, prioritizing pages where a pick may have been discontinued or reformulated.
Any page is reviewed immediately if a product on it is discontinued or reformulated, if a reader reports an error, or if something we published turns out to be wrong.
A reformulation is treated as a new product, because it is one — a product that behaves differently from the one we assessed should not keep an inherited recommendation.
Dates are never refreshed cosmetically. An old date on a page means the page has not been revisited, and we would rather you see that than a false recent one.
Corrections policy
Tell us: contact@primerandpoise.com or the contact form.
Factual errors are corrected promptly and the page's updated date changes.
If a correction materially changes a recommendation — a pick moves, a pick is removed, a stated limitation turns out to be wrong — the page states what changed rather than quietly editing it.
If a product we recommended turns out to have a problem we missed, we say so on the page rather than removing the pick silently.
We do not delete pages to make a mistake disappear. A page that was wrong and has been corrected is more useful than a page that vanished.
What this site will never publish
- Fabricated prices. No page prints a price we have not verified, which currently means no page prints a price at all.
- Invented ratings or review counts. There is no first-party rating data behind this site and we will not manufacture any.
- Fake testimonials. There are no testimonials anywhere on this site, because there are no sourced reviews of this publisher to quote.
- Invented credentials. No cosmetology qualification, no esthetics licence, no medical training, and no implication of any.
- Claimed testing that did not happen. No lab, no tester panel, and no "in our testing" phrasing.
- Medical advice. Several pages touch medical conditions and every one of them describes product design and refers the condition to a doctor.
- Invented urgency or scarcity. No sale countdowns, no stock warnings, no deal alerts — we have no inventory or pricing data and manufacturing urgency would be fabrication.
- Products we are not confident are currently sold.