Why we removed Amazon links (and prefer it this way)

You may have noticed that we removed advertisement from Amazon and all the links to the e-commerce giant. We had initially put them to make easier for you all to purchase the Nespresso pods that we review and to cover Nespressoguide’s costs. It made sense at the beginning to link to Amazon as it is the biggest shop, and one available for shipping to most countries. But we now removed all of the affiliation links leading to it.

The reasons are mainly two. First, Amazon has been lowering the rate given to publishers and the earnings that Nespressoguide was getting from them were dwindling since months. We do not personally like ads in any form and want to put them only if they either give you as readers a service or provide a not-so-intrusive way for Nespressoguide to cover the costs and continue reviewing pods. Amazon links and ads were doing neither.

Most of the pods that Nespresso is releasing are not found on Amazon. At least on the official Nespresso stores there. All the recent limited editions were not present on Amazon. You could purchase them through third-party shops but their reliability is questionable. Plus, most of the compatible Nespresso pods were either on an Amazon store of a specific country, or not at all. It was not a good service for you to click on a link to be redirected to a foreign Amazon shop where that particular capsule that you wanted to buy was not available. Plus, as said, the earnings were getting lower and lower so we opted to remove any affiliation of Nespressoguide with Amazon altogether. And, ethically-wise, we weren’t that keen to support Amazon to begin with.

We are keeping other forms of advertisement that are ensuring Nespressoguide to survive. We are saying this as we want to be 100% honest with you all. The pods’ prices have been increasing, as you surely know already. The hosting and domain costs have also been raised once last year by our provider. As much as we love to continue Nespressoguide, it cannot be a project that requires more money than it earns. We are not here to get rich, trust us, but neither to be in the red, month after month.

Therefore, if you have been enjoying our reviews and want us to continue informing you about news from the Nespresso world, donations are needed. We have been linking to a page where you can donate for some time, with admittedly scarce success. We want to ask you for any amount, minimum is $/€2, to help us continue our work on Nespressoguide. The page for donations is this one.

Do not worry if you see a name only and not Nespressoguide, Gianluca Fiore is the main author and reviewer here, he also deals with the technical aspects of the website. He first created the ko-fi page for donations and it seemed logical to all Nespressoguide team to simply use it. We equally share all earnings among our team.

You can also use the QR code below to directly donate. Any help is welcome, of course. If you prefer a subscription model where you pay a fixed amount each month, let us know in the comments and we will gladly set it up.

In alternative to money donation, you can contribute with actual pods. If you have some for the Original line that you do not like and that we have not reviewed yet, you can send them to us as a small token of appreciation. We will happily use for further reviews (and enjoy it as coffee).

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