Maintaining Editorial Integrity

Editorial integrity

Like any commercial website, WorkWhileWalking.com has to feed the writers. As a conscientious internet researcher and shopper, you know any reviews site has to have a commercial business model, whether it is through advertising revenues, affiliate links, subscriptions or some other visible (or invisible) means of support.

Our Rigorous Review Process

WorkWhileWalking.com have grown to over one million visitors per year since our inception in 2013. From the outset we wanted it to remain free of the annoying advertising banners. We weren’t keen on the sponsorship model wherein manufacturers can buy “puff piece” reviews for their products, a.k.a. “advertorial”, either. There are already plenty of sites in our space that do just that.

We have instead distinguished ourselves by running an extremely rigorous review process, consulting with real domain experts including mechanical engineers, materials scientists, kinesiologists and ergonomists, university professors and medical practitioners whenever our own staff needs to validate our own observations. That review process is transparent to our readers and to vendors who send us products to review. You can read about how we conduct our reviews in more detail here.

We also distinguish ourselves in terms of the readers that benefit the most from our content. Demographically, our readers are typically older, more highly-educated and higher-earning than the average internet shopper. They are the ones who search on “reviews” before making a considered purchase. They know that “verified user reviews” on many ecommerce sites are either faked or curated, and seek an objective, professional review conducted by people who actually have the right background and laboratory equipment to review them.

And that is why over the years Google has organically ranked WorkWhileWalking as the #1 site for reviews of standing desks, treadmill desks, standing desk converters, ergonomic monitor arms, ergonomic keyboard trays, and standing desk balance boards, among many other related office fitness and ergonomic accessory categories.

Our staff publishes roughly one hundred new product reviews and expert advice articles a year, giving us a depth of expertise in these particular product categories like you will never find on any broadly focused sites, such as CNET, NY Times (Wirecutter) or Consumer Reports, that typically review only a handful of products in our core office fitness categories over several years’ span, along with their main fair of cell phones, computers, cars and consumer electronics. Office fitness products are all we have ever focused on since our inception, and frankly we can barely keep up with new product introductions in our own little world to ever be tempted to go beyond.

Revenue Model

WorkWhileWalking’s considerable editorial staff payroll, laboratory testing, website software development and operating expenses are partially offset by earning small commissions (at no cost to the reader) from affiliate links, such as when you click the “Where to Buy” button on any of our reviews. For example, we are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Relationships with Key Industry Players

Because of our relationships in betwixt and between so many key industry players we have to maintain our editorial integrity or no company would submit its products to us for lab testing and review. We’re very proud of our track record in this regard, to the degree that numerous companies routinely consult with our editorial staff on new products they are developing, even though our parent organization also sells their competitors’ products.

The companies that are most likely to develop this kind of trusting relationship with our staff have received both positive reviews on some of their products and negative reviews on others. We believe in balanced reviews that dole out the good with the bad, and don’t write “puff pieces” for anybody, for any price—even though we’d certainly make more money if we only said nice things about every product we ever reviewed. Ultimately this is the only way that we will maintain the positive reputation we have earned for our deep expertise in these product categories, and continue to thrive.

 

Yours in health,

The Office Fitness Media Editorial Team