By Noah Rafkin, Bonus Bandit Research · Last revised
Bonus Bandit publishes research about money — bonuses, redemptions, and which operators actually pay. That puts us in a category Google calls "Your Money or Your Life," and it should put the burden of proof on us. These are the standards we hold ourselves to, in plain language. They sit alongside our review methodology, the Trust Score rubric, and our affiliate disclosure.
Our ratings are built from the same published rubric for every operator, with no affiliate weighting anywhere in the math. An operator cannot pay to raise its score, change its rank, soften a caveat, or remove a red-flag clause from its review. Commercial relationships affect whether we earn a commission when a reader signs up — never how we score the offer. When a paid relationship and an unflattering finding collide, the finding wins and stays on the page.
When a link can earn us a commission, we label it where you see it — not buried in a footer. Active affiliate links carry a "Sponsored" marker and rel="sponsored"; until a partner is approved and disclosure-safe, we link directly to the operator source instead. Every commercial page links to the full affiliate disclosure, and our sister product Beat the Spin is disclosed wherever it appears.
The headline question on every operator is "do you actually get paid?" We answer it by testing, not guessing:
When we have not yet completed a first-hand cycle, the page says so and leans on catalog and public-complaint data at a lower stated confidence. We never present untested operators as tested.
Factual claims trace back to a primary source: the operator's own terms, our own test logs, or named public complaint data. We prefer to link directly to the source over publishing a confident recommendation without one. Bonus values, redemption minimums, payout windows, and state eligibility change without notice, so we date what we verify and tell readers to confirm current terms at the operator before acting. Dynamic figures carry a "last verified" date.
We get things wrong, and stale offers go out of date. When we learn of an error — from a reader, an operator, or our own re-checks — we fix it promptly and, for anything that changes a score, rank, or material claim, we note what changed. Spotted something inaccurate or out of date? Email noah.rafkin@bonusbandit.win with the page URL and the detail, and we typically respond within 1–2 business days.
Bonus Bandit is an independent project operated as a sole proprietorship by Noah Rafkin in Boulder, Colorado. There is a real person behind the byline, a real address and email on the about page, and a single editorial standard across both Bonus Bandit and Beat the Spin. We are not an operator: we do not run a casino, sportsbook, or sweepstakes platform, and we do not take bets.