Affiliate Disclosure: Where My Virtual Girlfriend Gets Its Money
The short version
My Virtual Girlfriend earns its income from affiliate links. Say the site has a deal with an app, and you join that app from one of my links, the app may send the site a commission. That never pushes your price up.
Some partners actually cut it, with a reduced price or a coupon for visitors sent by sites like this one. The payment comes out of the app's marketing money, not out of your pocket.
That is how the whole thing works, and it is simple by design. Reviews are never paid for, no app sends me sponsored articles to publish, and readers do not pay a subscription. A brief version of this notice appears at the bottom of each page, so it follows you wherever you land.
Why this page exists
If a recommendation might put money in someone's pocket, you have a right to know, and advertising rules in lots of countries agree. A line of small print buried in a corner is not good enough, so this page uses plain words and every footer links to it. Out of all my trust pages, this is the one I would ask you to read, because it maps out exactly where my interests could pull away from yours.
Treat it as a set of promises you can hold me to. Each rule here describes how the site actually runs day to day, not a wish for how it ought to run. Should you ever spot a page breaking one of them, that page is wrong, and I will correct it and record the correction.
So what is an affiliate link?
It is an ordinary link to an app's site with a short tag added at the end. That tag lets the app know you arrived from here, so it can give the site credit when you join or buy something. On My Virtual Girlfriend, the tag also notes the page and the box you clicked, which shows me which pages people find helpful. Your name, your email and anything you entered on this site are never part of it.
Each partner link here is marked rel="sponsored", the signal that tells search engines a link is commercial. When I link to an app I have no deal with, it is a plain link to its official site with nothing added.
Programmes vary in what they pay and in how long a visit counts, and every app writes its own terms. They can change those terms whenever they like without telling anyone, which is part of why I never publish rates. What never varies between programmes is the way I treat an app's facts.
The things a commission cannot change
Every app has a single database record, and it holds its plans and prices, what the free tier allows, its content rules, billing notes, privacy terms and its catch. Pages print straight from that record. For a partner, the record is built from the same kinds of sources, checked in the same way and dated in the same way as for an app that never pays a penny.
No commission can lift a price, hide a catch, erase a downside from a review or slip in a claim the record cannot back.
I give every reviewed app a score, built from my own use and its official pages. Scores are not for sale, and signing up to an affiliate programme will never earn an app an extra point.
Labels work the same way. The record decides whether a review shows "Hands-on test, paid plan" or "Hands-on test, free tier", and no deal can flip one into the other. The label tells you whether I had a paid plan on that app or stayed with its free option, and my dated notes behind it sit right there on the review.
- Apps tried
- 90hands-on, 34 with a paid subscription
- Total paid
- $1,349subscriptions on my personal card
- Apps on file
- 78each price has a check date
- Latest hands-on
- FunFun AI
Pulled from the review database at build time. Every page shows the same figures. How I check the apps
Where money does play a part
I prefer to say it plainly instead of leaving you to wonder. There are exactly two spots where money counts.
- How lists are ordered. A list is built around its topic, not around scores. It includes the apps that fit the topic and have enough checked facts, and each entry shows its score next to it. Within that group, an app that runs a partner programme may be placed higher, and so may an app whose programme the site has applied to.
- Offer boxes. The offer cards, the header button and the bar along the bottom of a phone screen all point to a single app on each page. When a page covers several apps, that one is usually a partner.
Everything outside those two spots comes straight from the record. The words beside an offer box explain the catch for that app, and its complete review is a single click away. Whenever a partner does not suit what you are after, the text says so openly, even while the box next to it promotes that same app.
Offer boxes stay small by design: the free start, a price and a button, nothing more. You will not see downsides in them, since a tiny box is no place to weigh up a decision. Downsides belong in the body text, in each review's pros and cons and in its billing notes.
The catch always comes before any request to click, and each button tells you which app it leads to.
What partners get, and what they never get
Being a partner buys visibility. The app can appear in offer boxes, and it can move up among the apps that already suit a list. A partner never sees a page ahead of publishing, never signs off on wording, and never gets its catch described more gently.
If a partner shrinks its free tier, the page reports that as soon as I update the record, exactly as it would for an app with no deal at all.
When a partnership stops, links to that app go back to being plain official links. Nothing else moves: its record, my wording and its catch remain untouched, since none of it ever relied on the deal.
Discounts and coupon codes
A few pages mention a deal or a coupon code. Those only show while the check date behind them is recent, and they vanish on their own once it goes stale. There are no countdown clocks or fake "only three left" tricks on this site.
Any code I show comes with the date I saw it, because codes like these tend to die without warning.
When you pay an app
Money you spend on an app goes to that app. Your card goes through the app's own checkout, never through My Virtual Girlfriend. Your card details never reach me, and I have no power to refund you or to cancel a subscription for you.
Commissions get settled afterwards between the site and the app, and they never appear on your bill, neither as their own line nor as a bump in price. For refunds or cancelling, each app's review sets out the cancel steps and whatever refund rules the app makes public. The name on your statement is the app or its parent company, and the billing notes give that name whenever I know it.
Any app that still takes new sign-ups can get its own record and page, affiliate programme or no affiliate programme. A number of apps on My Virtual Girlfriend have no deal with the site whatsoever, and their pages are made exactly like the rest. Signing up to a programme will never squeeze an app onto a list that does not suit it.
The reverse is true as well. An app that refuses to deal with affiliate sites, or never set up a programme, can still be the best pick for someone, and then the page will say it is. Take a list of apps without adult content: it includes every app that meets that need, paying or not, and it does not matter if a single one of them pays anything.
Dropping a strong answer just for being unprofitable would make the site worse, and a worse site does not earn anything either.
Money and independence: your questions
Will I pay more if I click your links?
No. Every app sets its own price, and you pay that same price whether or not you came from this site, or less when a partner runs a discount. The commission comes from the app, not from you.
Can an app buy a better review?
No. Every app's facts, prices, policies and catch come from the same kind of record, and scores are not for sale. Money can shift the order among apps that suit a list equally well, and I say that openly right here.
Does the site earn anything if I stay on the free tier?
That comes down to the programme. Most pay only when someone buys a plan, and a handful pay per sign-up. Whichever it is, when an app offers a free start, my advice is to begin there.
Do your links follow me around?
A partner link lets the app know which page here sent you, so the site gets credit. Anything you type on My Virtual Girlfriend stays here. Cookies and tracking on the app's side are covered by its own privacy policy, and each review sums that policy up.
How to tell a partner link apart
A partner link is marked rel="sponsored" and opens a fresh tab. Links to apps with no deal carry no tag at all; they only appear because that app matters to the topic on the page. Offer box labels always match where they lead, so a button offering a free start with one app takes you to that app and no other.
If a link ever sends you somewhere its label did not promise, let me know. I count that as a bug and aim to fix it the same day.
Why I went with affiliate links
Most independent sites reviewing apps like these cover their costs with affiliate links. Everyone knows the risk: little by little, a site can start leaning toward whoever pays best. The rules here are my way of keeping that risk small on My Virtual Girlfriend. Facts live in records and look the same for every app.
Labels show how much of a review comes from documents and how much from my own hands-on time. List order is the only spot where business interests may count, and rather than hide that, I explain it on this page.
An example, step by step
Imagine I am putting together a free AI girlfriend list. Apps land on it when their free tier suits it and their facts have been checked: how many messages come with a free account, whether that number refills, and the price of the cheapest plan. Now suppose two apps suit it equally, and only one runs a partner programme.
The partner may take the first spot, and its offer may appear in the top box. Both entries still show their own free allowance, cheapest plan and catch, each from its own record, laid out the same way and dated the same way. If the partner's free chat ends after five messages and the other app refills daily, both facts are on the page, and the text points out which app works better for someone who wants to chat every day.
That is my line. The business can shape order and visibility. It cannot shape facts, labels or catches, and I will never sign an agreement that says otherwise.
Rather not use affiliate links?
That suits me completely. Each review states the app's name plainly, which lets you type its web address or look it up in your app store yourself. Skipping a partner link costs you nothing, because the facts, prices and catches are the same however you reach the app.
If a page was useful and you feel like supporting the site, clicking through its link does that. If you would rather not, you are just as welcome to everything here.
How I keep this page up to date
When the business changes, so does this page. The moment I sign the site up to another programme, every rule above covers it from the first link onward. Any new type of paid placement gets described here before it appears on the site, never after. The date shown above tells you the last time I went over this page.
If the site ever makes money in some way this page leaves out, the page is at fault, and please hold me to it.
Here is a mini checklist, since I love a good list. Before clicking any button on My Virtual Girlfriend, look for three things: the label names the app you expected, the price beside it has a recent check date, and the app's catch appears somewhere above the button. If one of the three is missing, I have made a mistake, and I want to hear about it.
One last thing, said plainly. My Virtual Girlfriend is a young site, and right now its links still go straight to official sites while my applications to affiliate programmes are pending. As those links become partner links, the only things that change are the tags added to links and, now and then, a cheaper price for you.
Every page already follows the rules above, so none of them will need rewriting once tags are added.
Where to go next
How I check facts and date them is covered in my editorial policy. Each fix and its date is recorded on the corrections page. The little that My Virtual Girlfriend stores about you is described in the privacy policy.
If you believe a page oversteps any line drawn here, send me a note through the contact page with the address of that page. I would far prefer to hear it from you than to lose your trust without ever knowing why.