There are lots of web sites around these days that give useful advice, especially in the financial field and comparison sites for utilities and telecoms services.

You may have wondered how these sites make any money or how they are funded on the web and this was recently highlighted in features in The Independent and  the Sunday Telegraph. You should be aware that whenever you use one of these sites and click through to a recommended supplier and then go on to purchase something or switch your utilities supplier etc. The site that you went through gets paid. The fees concerned for 'introducing' your custom in this way vary from around £10 up to £100 averaging around £30 every time someone uses their site as a route to somewhere else.

So what? Does it matter? Well yes it does, because the advice you are being given is not impartial, these sites only concern themselves with providers who will pay them a commission and those who don't will not get recommended or listed in the comparison tables. It doesn't matter what you choose from their site, they always get paid. Another aspect of this is that some of these sites tend to 'find fault' with the services provided by companies who won't pay them a commission or play them down in other ways.

The trouble is, especially with comparison sites, that the cheaper providers don't pay commissions but pass these marketing cost savings on to their customers so you're unlikely to find the cheapest providers of a service on these advice and comparison sites.

Having said all that however, there are some sites that are impartial. These tend to carry clear banner advertising links (for which they do get paid) rather than embedded text links or links through comparison tables. Alternatively they clearly identify 'preferred' or 'sponsor' providers.

It's a jungle out there on the web!