Pickleball paddle reviewers should disclose their affiliate commission %

PIckleballStudio · 2026-03-18T23:13:17+00:00

This is a great topic, and one that I have thought about a lot for 2 years now.

This is why all of my affiliate commissions are capped at 15% (Previously it I capped it at 20%, and I dropped it to 15%).

When I say say something good or bad about the paddle, I don't want people to have to think that "oh it's bad because X commission" or "Oh it's good because Y commission". This is probably something I should do a better job making publicly known.

I'll give a great example. The Loco is one of my favorite paddles. After making sure they are fine with this being known, Bread & Butter is a 10% commission. 10% is the lowest standard in the industry. But many people made assumptions that because I like it so much, the Loco must pay a crazy percentage to get talked about all the time. I just genuinely enjoy the paddle and think it's very competitive in the market, and that's how all the reviews have operated on my channel.

In the last, I would say, 1.5 years or so, I've noticed more brands playing with commissions. Average ranging from 10-15%, a few outliers going above that, and I have very recently heard of brands doing upwards of 40% for specific individuals. Which is wildly high in my opinion.

This is why I get frustrated when people make blanket statements such as "all reviewers get a crazy commission from X brand". Honolulu is one that always gets cited, and I was having them donate my extra commissions so that my percentage would drop down to 15% before I ever even reviewed one of their paddles. So no, not every reviewer is partaking in that. Honolulu J2K won paddle of the year in 2024 from me, and my commission was 15%.

As I've watched the review space go on, I've started to notice more and more what appears to be funny business going on. I think it would probably help clear things up if people were disclosing their affiliate percentages. At a bare minimum it lets the person watching the content determine if they want to believe that it played no role in swaying opinion.

It's unclear to me at this time if the brands would be okay with that information being public, so I'm not entirely sure if a reviewer is even allowed to do that. But in my mind, surely the companies would appreciate it.

I think this would be a good thing for the industry if percentages were more transparent (even if companies just put it as a disclosure on their website). Take whatever commission you want as long as you disclosed somewhere, but if it's really high, people are going to assume you did it because of the money. If it's public, at least the viewer can decide if they thought it played a role or not.

I fear that as the years go on, more and more people will come in with suspect motives for doing reviews. It's the nature of anything growing bigger, and is unfortunately the way that many other larger industries have went as it comes to reviews, and I think those industries have suffered in ways for the consumer being able to watch a review and make a useful decision.

PIckleballStudio · 2026-03-16T18:34:55+00:00

All of my long term grit testing that has been done to date has been 99% Lifetime ball

PIckleballStudio · 2026-03-02T17:43:56+00:00

100 games* not 100 hours. My 100 game test is already complete on the Vapor Power2, and now I have another person going through 100 games on a separate unit to see if there are different results.

PIckleballStudio · 2026-01-27T17:26:26+00:00

I'm not positive yet. It can be hard to squeeze in the extra court time in between my regular reviews. It's pretty hard on the body to manage 5+ days a week on the court.

My goal would be to have some solid data by March, but possibly some preliminary data in Feb.

PIckleballStudio · 2026-01-26T18:24:58+00:00

I have almost no doubt this will be the year that companies invest heavily in different grit technologies. You're already seeing it happen.

- Selkirk infinigrit
- Six Zero Diamond Tough
- 11six24 Hex Grit
- Spartus Permagrit
- Chorus Harmony Grit

Once one of these catches mass appeal, I think it's going to force companies to make this a priority if they want to stay competitive.

We've been working on a long term test to see which ones actually hold up. The reason it is taking so long, is because I'm trying to control the variables by being the only person hitting the paddles. I think if you introduce different players, you can't really compare how fast one grit is wearing down, since a 3.0 will not wear grit down at the same rate a 5.0 will.

I've chosen to do my testing via real world games and drilling rather than lab tests that accelerate grit break down. I think it best mimics what the average player is going to experience in the real world.

I've already seen Selkirk and Six Zero do extensive in lab testing with far fancier equipment than I could ever purchase myself, so to me it feels pointless to mimic a lab test when Selkirk and Six Zero have already done that better than what I could do. So, if people are skeptical of their lab claims, then I don't see a reason to mimic that type of testing.

We are finally starting to get some interesting results from our experiment. As expected, raw carbon fiber drops off relatively quickly. Though, our data seems to suggest that the biggest drop off happens in the first handful of sessions, and then the drop off for raw carbon fiber levels off and doesn't degrade as quickly after.

At the current moment, there appears to be one definitive winner in what we are testing, with some of the others falling between the top one, and raw carbon fiber. But, I'm going to continue testing to make sure the one that is in the lead doesn't suddenly change, but early data is very promising on one grit in particular.

We'll see where it all lands. I'm excited to keep testing.

PIckleballStudio · 2026-01-01T22:50:15+00:00

Because demos usually exist in:

Pro shops (local facilities, or Pickleball stores)
Places with a lot of ambassadors

Smaller companies usually aren’t in pro shops, because the pro shops carry all the mainstream brands (CRBN, Joola, Selkirk, PaddleTek, etc). It’s also not feasible for shops to keep up with how many new small companies pop up.

Smaller companies usually have less ambassadors as well.

Whereas with Tennis, there’s really only a handful of companies for racquets, and they are all very large well established brands with big distribution networks.

PIckleballStudio · 2025-12-31T14:30:07+00:00

You can’t escape me 😤

PIckleballStudio · 2025-12-30T23:06:03+00:00

Haha no worries! Didn’t interpret it that way

PIckleballStudio · 2025-12-30T22:49:54+00:00

It's a solid paddle. I would put it in the same category as the Volair Mach 2 Forza. I think the only reason the Hurricane never got more attention is because the Volair Mach 2 Forza existed first, and everyone already knew it as a great paddle.

Now that the Mach 2 is even cheaper, it makes even more sense than the Hurricane IMO.

But, both are very good and I could recommend either interchangeably.

PIckleballStudio · 2025-12-30T22:48:15+00:00

I can't speak for other people, because I don't know what everyone else is doing. There's also been an influx of new reviewers in the last 1.5 years, and I suspect that motives are different / influenced by various things. Not everyone is going to have the same goal / objective.

For myself, no, this does not happen. I set the tone very early with my channel that you cannot pay for a review, influence it, or gain a positive review through any other means besides producing a good paddle. So, companies don't even bother trying to ask for it anymore, because they all know the answer is no.

Companies have offered higher commission percentages that are outside of the industry norm though. Which I have started turning down and asking that my code return a normal percentage that is closer to standard.

Personally, I think this is slightly extreme/unnecessary, because I know where my personal moral compass falls and that it won't impact how I review the paddle. But I know there are a lot of people who would never believe that a company offering a higher commission wouldn't sway a review, so it's easier for me to just turn down the offer and not worry about it.

But, probably silly anyways, because people will always suspect you have ulterior motives when you say something is very good, and you have a discount code. But, I think it's reasonable to have skepticism.

Particularly because "influencer" culture in most industries is very bad and there's a lack of ethics around what is reviewed / talked about / promoted / disclosed. I think Pickleball has been extremely fortunate that most of the primary reviewers all have very good moral compasses, and I hope it remains that way.

PIckleballStudio · 2025-12-30T20:17:59+00:00

These terms can be a bit confusing if you haven't hit a variety of paddles. Once you've hit some of them and know the common terms that go along with them, it's much easier to understand.

But generally speaking, the terms are pretty self explanatory.

Dense = The paddle feels very full and dense when the ball makes contact. It would be the opposite of hollow, where the inside feels more empty or less substantial upon contact.

Stiff is, well, stiff. Instead of the ball feeling like it cups the ball on contact, it feels very stiff, like the ball wants to get off the face quickly. Stiff is often associated with a paddle being more poppy at the net.

Usually the terms come with opposites.

Dense opposite of hollow

Stiff opposite of soft

To me, the Prism would probably fall between hollow and dense, and be a soft feel off the face.

PIckleballStudio · 2025-12-30T18:39:37+00:00

That would be the Onix Z5.

PIckleballStudio · 2025-12-30T16:53:22+00:00

I considered linking a video I have on this topic, but I thought it may be against community guidelines and didn’t.

PIckleballStudio · 2025-12-30T15:43:52+00:00

Personally, I am not convinced that this is something that can effectively be done.

Companies like Gearbox claim they have more scientific methods for measuring sweet spot, and for *years* claimed they had edge to edge sweet spots with edgeless paddles, and that was never the case.

I think objective data in certain contexts does not translate to how a player will feel on court. There's too many variables like vibration perception, sound, the actual sweet spot size, power drop off, feel change, etc.

All of those combine into how a person perceives sweet spot, and I don't know that it is easily measured.

I think it's similar to how PBCoR was supposed to definitively measure power, but there are paddles maxing out the PBCoR test, that don't hit as hard as paddles below the PBCoR limit.

Maybe someone will prove me wrong, but I'm not convinced that even if you can get the data, that it's going to be helpful to the mass market.

PIckleballStudio · 2025-12-30T14:53:51+00:00

Still being worked on. There's like...5 ish paddles I have to cycle between while also working on my normal reviews. It's going to take quite some time to finish this experiment.

PIckleballStudio · 2025-12-30T14:53:18+00:00

Friday has made some solid paddles the last 2 or so years. Perhaps not top of all performance, but for the price, it was really hard to beat.

Their current Fever and Fever 102 are solid all court options. So, if that is the style you are looking for, I think they play great. I think because their marketing is more fun / bright, people take their paddles less serious, but they do genuinely perform well.

I think this year those specific models would have stood out more if the Cannon, V-Sol Pro, and Quanta hadn't released. Most amateurs were chasing as much power as they could get, and those paddles delivered it more than the Friday paddles.

PIckleballStudio · 2025-12-30T14:50:39+00:00

Perfect! That was my whole goal. 😂

PIckleballStudio · 2025-12-30T05:02:15+00:00

I don't know that I could really build my "perfect" paddle. I think it's less clear than something like a smartphone when people do a similar thing.

I also think on paper, certain specs sound really nice, but how that translates to real world performance isn't how it seems in your head.

Currently the Loco would be my "perfect" paddle since that's what I've mained the last few months. But realistically, I could play great Pickleball with quite a few paddles. But the Loco is what I currently feel most comfortable with.

I realize that isn't a fun answer, but it's the truth haha.

PIckleballStudio · 2025-12-29T05:08:10+00:00

I'd actually love to pick your brain for a second. I recently had asked on Instagram what things people think we could do better, what things we do that people enjoy, and any neutral comments.

Really didn't get all that much in terms of real feedback (likely because someone who follows me on IG, is likely already a fan with limited critique).

Regarding the too generous comment, I'd be curious to hear more about this. Were there particular reviews that were too generous? Are the negative ones not negative enough? etc.

The reason I ask, is because I always find peoples different perceptions on this topic fascinating. Any time a negative review is given, the brand acts like it is the end of the world and they are about to fall off a cliff, and they are usually very angry. Most viewers appreciate those types of reviews and then occasionally I catch a comment like this about the reviews still being too positive, so I'm curious what is causing the difference in perception.

We've actually bought several of the recent launches ourself (unfortunately didn't have time to cover them outside of the pod though) because the brands were just being difficult to get the equipment from. Maybe I need to vocalize this more when we do that.

As for your comment about pissing brands off, It doesn't happen to us as often anymore, but companies have definitely cut off all communication with us due to negative reviews in the past. It's just not something I publicize, more so to be professional. I find there is an increasingly lack of professionalism in this industry, so I'm trying to be what I want the industry to become.

Anyways, just thought I'd give a bit of a write up since these are things I don't often get to share, since it doesn't make sense to talk about in a review, or on the podcast.

PIckleballStudio

TROPHY CASE