Disclosure
How this site makes money
Insurance referrals pay a flat fee here, never a share of your premium and never more if you buy. A second kind of link works differently, and this page says which is which.
The short version
When this site links you to an insurance provider and you request a quote there, the provider pays a flat fee for that referral. The amount is the same whether you buy nothing or buy the largest policy they sell.
There is also a second kind of link, on the licensing pages, going to companies that file business paperwork. Those work like ordinary affiliate links and pay when an order is completed. They are covered in their own section below, because pretending the two arrangements are identical would be the easy thing to write and would not be true.
Why flat, and why it is not a detail
Most affiliate arrangements in insurance pay a percentage of the premium, or pay only when a policy is issued. This site refuses both, for a reason that goes beyond preference.
In the United States, the line between referring someone and selling them insurance turns substantially on two things: whether you discuss the specific terms and price of a policy, and whether your payment depends on the sale closing. Payment contingent on a sale is the arrangement that requires a producer license. A flat referral fee does not.
So the compensation structure is not a business preference here, it is the constraint that makes an unlicensed publisher lawful. It also has a convenient side effect for you: since nothing anyone earns changes based on what you buy, there is no financial reason for this site to push you toward one product over another. Which is why it does not.
The other kind of link, and why it is not the same
The licensing pages on this site answer a question that comes before insurance: whether a trade needs a state license, and what triggers it. People reading those pages are usually setting a business up, and the step right after licensing is registering the entity itself.
So those pages carry links to companies that file that paperwork: forming an LLC, acting as a registered agent, pulling a license research report. Those links are paid differently. They pay a fixed amount when someone completes an order on the company's own site, which means that payment does depend on a purchase happening. That is ordinary affiliate advertising, and it is legal for anyone, because filing business paperwork is not insurance and no state licenses the referral of it.
What does not change, and what this site commits to:
- None of those companies sell insurance. If one started to, its link would come down. Insurance referrals stay under the flat fee rule above, with no exceptions.
- The price is the same for you. Arriving through a link here costs exactly what arriving directly costs.
- It does not touch what the page says. What a state requires, what the threshold is and what the statute says come from the official sources cited and dated on each page. No commercial relationship has ever changed one of those lines, and the sources are linked so the claim is checkable rather than promised.
- Free things are named as free. An EIN is free from the IRS and takes about fifteen minutes. Where a page mentions it, it says so and links to the IRS, not to a company that charges for it.
What is running today
There are paid links on this site now. Every page carrying one shows a disclosure directly above it, naming which of the two arrangements applies. Pages without a disclosure carry no paid link.
When links do go live, three things happen at once and none of them can happen separately:
- A disclosure appears directly above the link, in normal readable text, visible without scrolling on a phone. Not in the footer, not behind an accordion, not in grey 10 pixel type.
- The provider is named in the link itself. No “get a quote” buttons that hide where you are being sent.
- The link leaves for the provider's own site. This site does not collect your information and does not pass anything about you to anyone.
What this money never buys
- A ranking.There are no scores, no stars, no top picks and no “best for” on this site, at any price.
- A recommendation. Pages describe what providers publish. They do not tell you what to buy.
- Editorial input. No provider sees a page before it is published or has any say in what it says.
- Silence about a gap. Every page names what the coverage does not do, including when that is inconvenient for a provider this site might later be paid by.
Your data
This site does not ask for your email, your phone number, or anything about your business. There is no lead form, no quiz and no chat. Nothing about you is sold, because nothing about you is collected. See the privacy page.
Questions about the money
Does clicking a link here change what I pay?
No. The referral fee is paid by the provider out of its own marketing budget. The price you see on the provider's site is the same price you would see arriving there directly.
Do you get paid more if I buy a policy?
No, and this is the part that matters most. For insurance, the fee is flat and it is tied to a referral or a quote request, not to a sale. Nobody here earns more because you bought a policy, or earns less because you did not. That structure is a deliberate design constraint, not an accident, and the reason is explained above.
Is every link on the site paid the same way?
No, and the difference is worth knowing. Insurance referrals are flat and are never tied to a sale, because that is what keeps an unlicensed publisher on the right side of the line. Links to companies that file business paperwork, such as forming an LLC or acting as a registered agent, are ordinary affiliate links: they pay a fixed amount when someone completes an order on that company's own site. Those companies do not sell insurance. Either way the price is the same as arriving there directly, and either way the payment has no effect on what a page says about what the law requires.
Are you an insurance agency or broker?
No. Small Trades Coverage is a publisher. It holds no producer license, it does not sell policies, it does not quote, and it does not discuss any individual's specific coverage. Everything past the click happens between you and the provider.
Do advertisers decide what appears on this site?
No. Providers have no input into which pages get written, what those pages say, or what order anything appears in. There are no sponsored pages and no paid placements.
Are there referral links on the site right now?
Yes. Every page that carries one shows a disclosure directly above it, in normal readable text, naming what the relationship is. If you do not see a disclosure, there is no paid link on that page.