Advertising and Affiliate Disclosure
By Alex Johnson · Published 22 August 2026
The short version
Some links on this site are affiliate links. If you click one and go on to buy something, I may receive a commission from the provider. It costs you nothing extra, it does not affect what I recommend, and there are none at all in the bereavement section.
That is the whole of it. The rest of this page is the detail, for anybody who wants it.
What an affiliate link actually is
An affiliate link is a normal link with a tracking code attached. If you click it and later buy the product, the company can see that you came from this site and pays me a small percentage of the sale. It is how a great deal of the internet is funded, including most comparison sites and money blogs you have ever used.
The important part, and the part some sites are cagey about: the price you pay is exactly the same either way. You are not paying a premium for arriving via me. The commission comes out of the provider's marketing budget, not your pocket.
How to spot one
Every commercial, affiliate or paid link on this site is marked with an asterisk immediately after it, like this: *.
If there is no asterisk, I earn nothing from the link. Most links on this site have no asterisk, because most of them point at gov.uk, a charity, or another page here.
Where affiliate links appear on this site
Affiliate links appear mostly in the Financial section, where I discuss products you might actually buy: life insurance, critical illness cover, income protection, pre-paid funeral plans, will-writing services and similar.
Affiliate links do also appear to a lesser extent in the Practical and Emotional sections, though far more rarely.
They may also appear occasionally in blog posts where a specific product is genuinely relevant to the subject.
Where affiliate links never appear
There are none in Dealing With Death, the section for people who have just lost somebody. Not one, and there never will be.
If you have arrived at that page, you are having one of the worst days of your life and you are trying to work out how to register a death. The idea of monetising that is grotesque. Every link in that section goes to gov.uk, a charity, or another page on this site.
How I choose what to link to
The order of operations matters here, so let me be precise about it.
I write the page first, working out what I actually think is worth doing and why. Only then do I look at whether a relevant provider has an affiliate programme. Not the other way round.
That means:
I do not accept payment for inclusion. No provider has paid, or can pay, to appear on this site or to be described favourably.
Commission rates do not affect rankings or recommendations. Where I compare providers, the comparison reflects what I think of them, not what they pay.
I link to providers with no affiliate programme at all where they are the right answer, which happens regularly.
I tell you when I think a product is not worth buying, including products I could earn commission on. There are several examples of exactly this across the site.
If a recommendation ever reads as though it was written to sell you something, I have failed at my job, and I would like to know about it.
What I do not do
No display advertising, banner ads or pop-ups
No sponsored posts or paid guest articles
No selling, renting or sharing of your data with advertisers
No "top ten providers" tables ranked by commission
The free resources really are free
The templates, checklists and guides on this site are free downloads. The Death Planning Master Checklist requires no email address, no sign-up and no payment. Some other templates are available to newsletter subscribers, but the newsletter itself is free and you can leave whenever you like.
Nothing on this site is behind a paywall, and I have no plans to change that.
Why I do this at all
Honest answer: I want this site to make money.
I am not going to be coy about it. It costs money to run and a great deal of time to write, and my father, who was nobody's idea of a soft touch, would have thought me an idiot for doing all this for nothing. He would have been right.
So yes, there is a commercial motive here, and I would rather tell you that plainly than hide behind some performative selfless altruism. Of course, I love the fact that this site is providing some help, for free, that will hopefully make a positive difference to families at the worst moments in their lives. And affiliate income is the least intrusive way I could find to fund it: no charging readers, no adverts cluttering the place, no selling anybody's data. The one trade I am unwilling to make is the one where the recommendations bend to fit the revenue.
You are, quite reasonably, entitled to be sceptical about that last bit. So judge it on the pages. If the advice looks like friendly advice, occasionally tells you not to buy things, and sends you to gov.uk or charities more often than to a provider, the arrangement is working as intended.
Questions
If anything here is unclear, or you think a particular link or recommendation looks off, please tell me via the contact page. I will give you a straight answer.
“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”
Warren Buffet
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About the founder. I'm Alex Johnson, and I built Not So Grave after my father died suddenly in 2023. Going through his estate taught me more about death planning than any guide I could find at the time, partly because of the documents he'd left, and partly because of the gaps where he hadn't. I'm not a solicitor or a financial adviser, and I'll always tell you when to use one. What I am is someone who's been through it and wants to make your turn easier.