Editorial policy

IncomeShip covers ways to earn money in the United States, online and in person: what each one pays, what it costs to start, what it asks of you and what can go wrong. We also profile the platforms people earn through, and write guides on what applies across all of them, like scams, taxes and getting paid.

Everything we publish is general information. It isn't financial, tax or legal advice. When a decision depends on your own situation, we say what to check and point to the official source.

We rank sources by how close they are to the fact:

1. The platform's own pages: its help center, terms, fee schedules and pay pages. A platform's fee is whatever its own page says it is.
2. Government sources: the IRS, the FTC, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and state and city agencies for licenses, permits and taxes.
3. Published research and reporting from named organizations, for figures no platform or agency publishes.

Forums, Reddit and social media posts tell us what people are running into, so we use them to decide what to check. We never cite them as evidence for a fact.

Every page lists its sources, with the date we checked each one.

We built our own research software to do the legwork no one person could keep up with. It reads platforms' terms, fees and help centers, picks up new scam patterns and new ways people are earning, and gathers what official sources say about each one, so we can re-check a page against the same sources when something changes. It then organizes what it finds into the same clear format, so every page answers the same questions in the same order.

Two rules apply to everything that comes out of it:

• Every fact is matched to its source. Each figure, rule or claim is checked against the exact text of the page that states it. If we can't find a source that says it, it doesn't go on the page.
• A person approves every page. Jacob Dymond, our founder and editor, reviews each idea, platform profile and guide before it's published.

We compile and verify; we don't claim to have done every job ourselves. Each page's “How we researched this” note says how many sources it draws on and when its facts were last checked.

• The number first, in plain language. If a platform keeps 20% of each booking, we say that before we say anything about it.
• Earnings as evidence, not promises. We show what sources report, as a range where we can, with the date and what the figure leaves out: unpaid time, fees, gas, supplies. We never promise what you'll make.
• No ratings and no “best” lists. We don't score platforms or crown winners. We lay out the terms side by side so you can judge what fits you.
• Where the evidence is thin, we say so. If no source publishes a figure, we tell you that rather than guess.

Scams follow money, and a lot of them target people looking for work. We flag the patterns aimed at people earning through the work and platforms we cover, using the platforms' own safety pages and the FTC, and we say plainly when something isn't legitimate. Our guide to spotting side-hustle scams is the place to start.

• No platform can pay to be covered, to rank higher or to be described differently.
• We don't publish sponsored content, and we don't sell courses, coaching or paid communities.
• If a platform asks us to change a page, we change it only if the facts are wrong.

IncomeShip doesn't earn money from anything it links to today. If that changes, our disclosures page will say how, before it happens.

• Every page shows the date its facts were last checked.
• Guides carry a review date, set by how often their subject changes: yearly for tax rules, more often for platform terms.
• When a platform changes its fees or terms, we update the page and note the change on it, with the date.

If we get something wrong, we fix it and say so on the page, with the date. Our corrections policy explains how to report an error and what happens next.

Jacob Dymond, IncomeShip's founder and editor, is responsible for what we publish. IncomeShip is built by Valiance Labs. You can reach us through our contact page.