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I've made agreements with a few companies:  I place little ads on my pages and in return I receive a small percentage (0% - 15%) on some items that are bought by visitors to this site.  So far it's averaged about 6%.  Actually, my main goal in starting this reviews site was to make it easier on me.  Some of the same questions kept popping up on the homeschooling bulletin boards about certain curricula.  I found myself repeating myself when questions were asked about curricula.  If I had just answered someone else a week ago about, say, Alphaphonics, I often didn't feel like answering someone else all over again when the question was similar to the other.  Yet, I wanted to help the person out, but answering the same questions over and over again takes a lot of time.

So I got to thinking that I could just put some reviews up on a website and then I could point folks to that site when someone asked a question.  Plus I figured there are only two publishers/authors that sold review-type books, so why not make some reviews available for free right on the internet.  I know that when I'm looking for a new curriculum item, that I want opinions on the curriculum--is it good?  worth the money?  easy to use?  what's covered?  etc.  So other people probably want that same thing--why not make more reviews available to us homeschoolers?  Voilá!  A new website is born.

Then about four or five months later, my husband told me about Amazon's program and I signed up.  That was way back in 1997.  I've since made agreements with a software company (Beyond.com), a sheet music company (SheetMusicPlus), a school supplies company (Office Max), and a new and *used* and *out-of-print* book company (Powell's).  I've also become affiliated with a number of other companies which sell *used* and *out-of-print* books.  What's nice about being affiliated with them and having links on my review pages is that visitors can click through to ... let's say, Amazon, and then can read *more* information about the book from other readers and then hop back to my site to keep cruising around.  Nothing ever needs to be bought, but more information can be had (price, ISBN, publisher, more *reviews,* a photo).  And it's easy for you to buy the item if you'd like by just putting the item in your shopping basket.  And what I like about the shopping basket programs is that you are allowed to remove items later without that embarrassing feeling that someone's seeing you put something back on the shelf (well, maybe that doesn't embarrass you at the grocery store, but it does me!)  If Amazon doesn't carry that item, then I send you to a website that does or I give you an address/phone number so that you have a source for that item in case you want to buy it or find out more about it.