As many of you are aware, in the past for a short time, we sold banner ads on our website. After a lack of focus seven years ago, we put everything we did under the microscope of financial results. It is a dirty thing to have to do but we did it to every business unit we have. As a result, many of the businesses we had been conducting in the past are no longer around like selling commercial equipment, designing our own equipment, remote service offices, etc. For the last seven years, we are simply a parts and repair company that also does reviews. We have some ancillary services like extended warranties and delivery service but everything in our core business to extensions is highly related. The big surprise was that we spent nearly $200k every year on all efforts to support the reviews. Since we have never accepted money, gifts, travel, free samples, or any other type of financial inducement for the reviews we do, all of the review expenses came directly from the bottom line.

In order to make this work, we decided to return to the Google advertising model since know there is no free lunch for anything we do, including reviews. We had thought the reviews were a type of advertising for our parts sales but with the help of some free Google analytic software, we found out we were sadly mistaken so we've been essentially paying to give the public our opinions. You have been asking us for 16 years what to buy and through a poll we conducted on the site, you guys told us you don't want to pay for the reviews, so that leaves advertising as our only option.

In an interesting twist, we adopted the Google model and the advertisers on our site pay when you click for more information from our site to the site of the advertiser. To make it fair, every manufacturer pays the exact same amount per click. Treadmill Doctor does NOT accept affiliate fees so whether you buy something we give a good review or whether you buy something we give a horrible review, it doesn't make a financial difference to us (although if you do buy a cheaply made model, please bookmark our site for future parts needs).

Almost 90% of our company's revenue is still tied directly to our parts and service businesses and, with the help of our financial housecleaning, we are stronger than ever and doing well in our parts and service businesses but the reviews will at least have to cover most of their costs via the new advertising program. Listed below is a list of companies that are either advertising with us now or have advertised in the past (just to make sure you have full information).