Who pays for that broker review?
Before trusting any 'honest review' of a binary options broker — including ours — it is worth understanding exactly how the money flows in this industry.
How the affiliate model actually works
| Model | What the affiliate receives | What it incentivises |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue share | 50–70% of the referred trader's net losses | The affiliate literally earns when you lose |
| CPA | Fixed payment per funded account | Incentive: get you to deposit, at any cost |
| Hybrid | Smaller CPA + smaller revenue share | Both incentives, diluted |
| Sub-affiliate | A cut of other affiliates' earnings | Why the same content is copied across hundreds of sites |
Why this shapes what you read
Ask yourself who pays for the page you are reading. If the answer is "the broker, when you deposit", then every editorial decision leans one way: legality questions get answered optimistically, risk sections get shortened, win rates get inflated, and the "verdict" is always to sign up. It is not that affiliates are villains — it is that you cannot expect an honest 'don't do this' from someone paid when you do it.
This is exactly why our page on Quotex's legal status in India reaches the opposite conclusion of most search results, even though Quotex is one of the two brokers we have affiliate links with (details below).
How to spot a conflicted review in 10 seconds
- The signup link has tracking parameters (
?ref=,/aff/, a redirect domain). - No regulator is named — no RBI, SEBI, BAPPEBTI, SECP, CVM, FCA anywhere on the page.
- Win rates above 70%, "guaranteed signals", or screenshots of profits without a losing day.
- A "risks" section that is one polite sentence long.
- The same paragraphs appear, near-identical, on a dozen other domains.
Same question, two answers: real examples of the pattern
The quickest way to recognise a conflicted review is to compare how it answers the questions readers actually ask. The phrasing in the middle column is typical of affiliate pages in this niche; the right column is what the same answer looks like when nobody is paid for your deposit.
| Reader question | Typical conflicted answer | What an honest page does instead |
|---|---|---|
| "Is Quotex legal in India?" | "Yes, Quotex is legal and safe for Indian traders. Open your account here." | Names the regulators (RBI Alert List, SEBI), says the platform is not authorised, and explains what that means for your money. Our answer. |
| "What win rate does this strategy reach?" | "90% accuracy with our signals." | Gives an out-of-sample figure with its sample size. Our best strategy scored ~57–61% on n ≥ 150; the break-even at an 80% payout is 55.6%. |
| "Is OTC trading a good idea?" | "Trade 24/7, even on weekends!" | Says OTC prices are generated by the broker and that no strategy in our study beat ~50% on them. The data. |
| "Does martingale work?" | "Never lose again: double after every loss." | Shows the bill: at factor 2.2, three losses in a row cost $40.20 to chase a ~$4 win on a $5 entry. The math. |
| "Should I start on demo?" | "Demo is fine, but real money builds the right mindset. Deposit $10 now." | Tells you to stay on demo until you have at least 150 trades above break-even with the exact settings you plan to use. |
Do the math the review skipped
Revenue share is calculated on what the broker earns from the trader you referred, and in binary options that is essentially the trader's net losses. IQ Option's own affiliate site, checked in September 2026, advertises "up to 50% Revenue Share". At that rate, a referred reader who deposits and loses $200 can be worth up to about $100 to the affiliate who sent them.
Now the reader's side. Expectation per trade = p × payout − (1 − p). At an 80% payout the break-even win rate is 1 / (1 + 0.8) = 55.6%. A reader who takes 100 trades of $10 on OTC pairs, where our study found ~50%, expects to lose 0.5 × 0.8 − 0.5 = −$0.10 per dollar, or about $100. At a genuine 55% the expected loss is still about $10. In other words, the content that maximises affiliate revenue is exactly the content that pushes readers towards more trades, higher stakes and OTC: "24/7 trading", "90% signals", martingale. A review that never shows this arithmetic is leaving out the most important number on the page.
A 7-point checklist before you trust any broker review
- Hover over the signup button. Tracking parameters such as
?lid=,aff=or a/redir/path mean the page is paid per signup. Our own links look exactly like this, which is why we disclose them. - Look for a named regulator, then check the register yourself. RBI, SEBI, CVM, FCA or BAPPEBTI should appear by name, with a link. "Regulated" with no name is a red flag. Country by country: binary options legality.
- Look for the break-even math. Any page discussing win rates without 1 / (1 + payout) is selling, not explaining.
- Look for a "don't". Does the site ever recommend against something that would pay it: a broker in your country, OTC, martingale, a bonus?
- Check where the disclosure is. The US Federal Trade Commission's endorsement guidance says "the closer the disclosure is to your recommendation, the better", and that the bare words "affiliate link" may not be understood by readers. A disclosure hidden in the footer does not meet that standard.
- Paste a distinctive sentence into a search engine. Identical paragraphs on a dozen domains mean template content. Google's spam policies call pages that republish merchant content without adding value "thin affiliation".
- Check whether changing numbers are dated. Payouts, minimum deposits and legal status change. A figure without a date may be years old.
Our model, stated plainly
The bot is free and open source. The site does carry affiliate links, and after everything above you should know exactly what they are:
- Which brokers: only Quotex and IQ Option. Our IQ Option link contains
aff_model=revenue, which indicates a revenue-share arrangement, the same model described in the table at the top of this page. Deriv, which we rate as the technically most solid broker for automation, has no affiliate link on this site. - Where they appear: in the English section, as of September 2026, only on the home page, the FAQ and the About page. There are none on the strategy studies, the legality pages or this page.
- How they are marked:
rel="sponsored nofollow"in the code, the attribute Google asks sites to use for paid links, plus a written disclosure in the FAQ and the About page. - What the commission does not change: verdicts. We publish that OTC is random, that 70% win rates are a myth, that 5 of the 13 strategies in our own bot lose money on 1-minute charts, and that Quotex is not legal for Indian residents, although both brokers promote OTC and one of them is Quotex.
- Other income: voluntary donations, and the e-mail list we use to send the download and study updates.
If you find a page where we point to a broker without stating the risk or the legal situation, treat it as a bug in this policy and report it to contato@botbinaryoptions.com with the URL. More on how pages are written and checked: About the project.
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FAQ
How much do binary options affiliates earn?
Typically 50–70% revenue share on a referred trader's net losses, or a one-off CPA payment per funded account. Either way, the affiliate is paid more when you lose more or deposit more.
Does that make every review site dishonest?
Not automatically — but it explains the pattern. When 'is X legal in my country' is answered with an enthusiastic yes and a signup button, the incentive is doing the writing.
How do I spot a conflicted review?
Look for: a tracked signup link, no mention of regulators, no downside section, claimed win rates above 70%, and a 'verdict' that never says 'don't'.
Do you use affiliate links?
Yes, for Quotex and IQ Option only. They are marked rel="sponsored" and disclosed, appear only on the home page, the FAQ and the About page, and never on legality or study pages. The commission does not change verdicts: we still publish that Quotex is not legal for Indian residents and that OTC is random.
Is a review with a disclosure automatically trustworthy?
No. A disclosure tells you the incentive exists; it does not remove it. Judge the page by whether it names regulators, shows the break-even math and ever tells you not to do something.
How much can an affiliate earn from one reader?
On revenue share, a percentage of that reader's net losses for as long as they trade. IQ Option's affiliate site advertised "up to 50% Revenue Share" in September 2026, so a reader who loses $200 can be worth up to about $100 to the affiliate.
⚠️ Educational content, not investment advice. Binary options carry a high risk of total loss and are restricted or illegal in several countries.