The Editorial Team

Income Reality Check is produced by a small editorial team that splits responsibility by beat. Every reality check is written, fact-checked, and edited by people — AI tools help with transcript analysis, research, and drafting, but the verdicts, source verification, and final word choices belong to the team.

How the team is organized

We work in four overlapping beats. A senior editor reviews every reality check before it goes live, regardless of which beat produced it.

AI side hustles, creator economy, YouTube monetization

This beat tracks Anthropic / OpenAI / Google product launches, YouTube Partner Program rules, creator-economy reporting (Reuters, CNBC, Bloomberg), and the actual CPMs and Shorts payouts reported on creator forums. The editor on this beat has tested most of the tools personally and can tell a productized workflow from a thumbnail-deep pitch.

E-commerce, Etsy, print-on-demand, Amazon FBA/KDP

This beat reads Etsy seller policy updates, Amazon Seller Central / KDP policy pages, Shopify research, and independent marketplace journalism. The editor verifies every fee, royalty rate, and platform statistic against the platform's own seller documentation on the day of publication. Quoted earnings figures are checked against the platform's published seller-revenue distribution where one exists.

Investing, dividends, crypto, real estate income

This beat works from SEC filings, FINRA Investor Alerts, Treasury data, FTC and CFPB enforcement actions, and reputable financial journalism (Reuters, Bloomberg, WSJ, FT). Crypto coverage cites the actual whitepaper or on-chain data, not the influencer's screenshot. We never publish a return figure without the time period, fee structure, and tax assumptions the figure depends on.

Affiliate marketing, service businesses, digital products

This beat covers FTC endorsement guidelines, BLS occupational data, and platform-specific revenue reporting (Substack, Patreon, Gumroad transparency reports). Income claims are checked against BLS, IRS Schedule C aggregate data, or the platform's own creator-revenue reports.

Editorial review process

Before any reality check publishes, it passes the following checks:

• The source video is watched end-to-end and the relevant claims transcribed verbatim.
• At least three independent authority sources cited inline, ideally including one government regulator (FTC, SEC, CFPB, IRS, equivalents abroad) for income-claim content.
• Every dollar amount, fee, royalty rate, and CPM verified against the platform's official page on the day of publication.
• Every cited URL fetched and verified to load and contain the claim.
• A verdict drawn from one of five fixed buckets — never a generic "good" or "bad".
• YMYL disclosure language present on any article touching investing, crypto, real estate, or tax.
• No invented statistics, no invented case studies, no invented experts.

Conflict of interest

The editorial team holds no positions in courses, communities, or training programs reviewed. The site earns revenue through display advertising and through affiliate links to legitimate platforms an article naturally references. We never link to (or earn commissions on) the courses or "mastermind" communities that a reviewed creator is selling, since that's the kind of conflict the verdict system exists to surface.

Corrections

If you see an error, write to trisstann@gmail.com with the article URL and the specific claim. We respond within 48 hours and post corrections at the top of the affected article.

Reach the team

For video suggestions, corrections, partnership inquiries, or press requests, see the contact page.