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The Roofing Ledger

Editorial ethics · FTC disclosure

Disclosure & ethics

We’ll tell you what we are, what we are not, what we make money from, and what we cannot verify. None of this is legal boilerplate. Read it.

In short

Two conflicts we manage

Roofing Force (familial connection to one editor) and RidgeSense customers (commercial relationship). Both disclosed on every article in which they appear.

How money flows

Pre-revenue today. Future: flat per-lead fees from featured contractors, identical for every contractor in a market. Plus RidgeSense referrals.

What we won’t do

No payment for inclusion or ranking. No gifts. No paid posts. No silent edits to published articles.

Conflict of interest: Roofing Force

Roofing Force is a roofing contractor operated by a member of a Roofing Ledger editor’s immediate family. Roofing Force may, from time to time, qualify under our framework in the markets it serves. When that happens, the following rules govern how we cover them.

  • The relationship is disclosed prominently on every article in which Roofing Force appears, and on Roofing Force’s research profile.
  • Roofing Force is evaluated against the same Tier-1, Tier-2, and Tier-3 framework as every other contractor — same hard filters, same weighted criteria, same context flags.
  • Any article featuring Roofing Force is reviewed by an editor with no familial connection to the contractor before publication.
  • The Roofing Force entry in the contractor data structure includes a non-removable disclosure field rendered in every place the contractor is referenced.
  • The Roofing Ledger earns no revenue from Roofing Force. Roofing Force does not pay The Roofing Ledger for leads, for inclusion, or for any other service. No money flows between the two companies in either direction. Roofing Force is excluded from the homeowner-side lead-gen program at the data-schema level.

Conflict of interest: RidgeSense customers

A featured contractor may also be a customer of a separate roofing-industry CRM and services business operated by a Roofing Ledger editor. When that overlap exists for any contractor we cover, our handling is:

  • The relationship is disclosed prominently on the contractor’s card in every article in which they appear.
  • Coverage is based on the same framework as every other contractor. They cannot pay to be featured or to move up.
  • The article notes the relationship in the byline area so a reader can weigh the article accordingly.
  • Payments The Roofing Ledger receives that relate to the separate CRM and services business (e.g., referral fees) are disclosed below.

How we make money

As of publication: minimal revenue. The Roofing Ledger is funded out-of-pocket by the editors’ separate operating businesses while the editorial work is being built. A preliminary lead-generation program is operational on a manual-routing basis. The full business model is two-fold:

  1. Consumer-side lead generation from homeowners who request quotes through The Roofing Ledger, paid by featured contractors at a fixed flat rate per lead. The rate is identical for every featured contractor in a given market. Roofing Force is excluded from this program — we do not accept lead-gen revenue from Roofing Force regardless of whether they qualify.
  2. Referrals to RidgeSense, a separate CRM product an editor operates, sold to roofing contractors. Some featured contractors may also be RidgeSense customers. They pay nothing additional to be featured.

The bright lines we will not cross

  • We do not accept payment for inclusion. A contractor cannot pay to be featured.
  • We do not accept payment for ranking position. A contractor cannot pay to move up.
  • We do not adjust article order based on whether a contractor accepts the lead-gen offer.
  • We do not accept gifts, services, or non-cash compensation from any contractor or related party.
  • We will disclose any future revenue source on this page within thirty days of it going live.

What we cannot verify

Our framework is a screen, not a guarantee. The following are out of scope and a homeowner should treat them as their own due diligence:

  • The quality of any specific job once it is in progress.
  • Whether a 10-year workmanship warranty will be honored.
  • The character of the specific crew that arrives at a homeowner's house.
  • Whether the homeowner's specific situation maps cleanly to a contractor's typical job.
  • The actuarial value of any given warranty.

See the methodology for full context.

Editorial independence

No featured contractor sees an article before it is published. Contractors are not given the opportunity to remove negative findings, soften language, or influence ranking position before publication. They are notified once an article goes live and may contact us with factual corrections through the same corrections process as any reader.

We do not run paid posts. We do not run sponsored content. We do not run native advertising. The only paid relationships that will ever exist on The Roofing Ledger are the lead-gen and CRM-referral relationships described above, separated from editorial decisions by a documented firewall.

Contact for disclosure questions

If you believe we have failed to disclose something we should have, write to editor@theroofingledger.com. We respond to disclosure questions within seven days.