Inside AFFDude

How AFFDude rates things

Two numbers, never mixed. An editorial score set by people who run traffic, and a user rating from people who used the product. Here is exactly how each one is made and what every badge means.

The Dude Score (0–10, editorial)

Set by the AFFDude team, never by users and never by advertisers. Four axes are scored 0–10 each and averaged; the written verdict on the profile explains the number. A listing without a score simply has not been through the process yet: it shows “Not yet rated”, not a guess.

Offers — breadth and quality of what you can actually run: verticals, GEOs, exclusive offers, caps.
Payouts — rates against the market, minimum payout, hold period, payment methods and whether people get paid on time.
Tracking — postback and S2S support, tracker integrations, reporting depth, click/conversion accuracy in our tests.
Support — manager responsiveness, onboarding, dispute handling and how the company treats reviews.

Scores are reviewed when terms change, when a pattern of user reviews contradicts them, and at least once every twelve months. The score is shown as a ring on the profile and a pill on cards. It is not marked up as a review in structured data on network profiles, because Google does not treat self-authored editorial scores as review snippets.

Badges

Dude Verified — a team member checked the payout terms, minimums and contact details within the last 90 days. The date is shown. The badge drops automatically on day 91 until someone re-verifies.
Dude Approved — editorial pick: Dude Score of 8 or higher, verified within 90 days, and no unresolved user reports. Reviewed quarterly.
Top Rated — automatic: at least 10 approved user reviews with an average of 4.5 stars or more.
New — automatic for 30 days after a listing is published.
Rising — automatic, recomputed daily from 30-day profile view growth.

User rating (1–5 stars)

The mean of approved reviews, shown with the count and a five-bucket histogram. Reviewers rate the same four axes plus an overall star. This is the only number eligible for aggregate-rating markup, because it comes from users, not from us. It is never blended into the Dude Score.

Review moderation

Every review is held for a human before it appears. Positive, neutral and negative reviews go through the same queue.
Anti-abuse: hidden honeypot field, Cloudflare Turnstile, a limit of three reviews per IP per day and one review per person per listing per 30 days. IPs are stored hashed.
Reviews mentioning the reviewer’s own product, containing links to it, or written from the company’s network are rejected.
Readers can mark a review helpful or report it; reports return the review to the queue.
Companies that claim their listing can reply publicly to reviews. They cannot edit or remove them.

Verification cadence

Payout terms, minimums, payment methods and contact channels are checked against the company’s own pages and, where possible, a manager. The “Last verified” date on every profile is real. A nightly job expires deals past their end date, drops stale Verified badges and recomputes ratings.

Affiliate disclosure

Links that go through /go/ are affiliate links: if you sign up, AFFDude may earn a commission at no cost to you. They carry rel="sponsored nofollow". Commissions never influence a score, a badge, a ranking position or whether a review is approved. Networks that pay nothing are scored the same way as networks that pay well. Full text: affiliate disclosure.

Corrections

Spotted an outdated term or a wrong number? Tell us and it is checked within two working days. Companies can also claim their listing to keep terms current themselves.