CostumeDudes is one of the oldest and largest free resources for costumes and cosplay kits.
A common question we often get asked is, “why do you offer everything for free?”
That’s usually followed up with, “how do you make money?”
So we’re creating this page to answer how CostumeDudes is funded, and why you should care.
Why is CostumeDudes Free?
If you’re just breaking into the cosplay and costume industry, you often don’t have a large budget to spend on kits and makeup.
But if you’re serious about making a business out of it, you’ll need a pretty big budget.
We started CostumeDudes in 2020 with a single goal: curate the best cosplay kits and costumes out there in a way that’s easy to understand and 100% free.
Our goal is to help small cosplayers and costume enthusiasts compete with the biggest players in the market.
In simple words: We created CostumeDudes to offer readers the kind of content we wish we had when we first started out.
How is CostumeDudes Funded?
Running a blog like CostumeDudes requires money. Lots of it. We need writers, developers, marketing specialists, public relations specialists, and more.
The truth is that we set out to build a community and it takes money to sustain any community.
Think Clash of Clans!
We earn referral fees when you buy services from companies that we recommend. That’s how we run our clan. All opinions are our own, and we do not accept payments for positive reviews.
This monetization method is called affiliate marketing. The biggest brands on the internet offer affiliate programs such as Amazon, eBay, Google, etc. Many of your favorite sites use affiliate marketing to pay the bills.
The only difference is that not everyone tells their users how they make money.
You’ll probably see links like this one: https://costumedudes.com/recommends/mens-t-rex-dinosaur-costume/
When you click on these links you are tagged with a special cookie to track the referral. If you end up buying the product, then the original vendors pay us a referral fee.
This comes at ZERO added costs to you. In fact, if you subscribe to our newsletter, you’ll probably find a bunch of deals that help you save money instead.
We don’t see any personal information i.e., name, email, address, credit card, etc.
The only thing we see is that an anonymous user made a purchase on date/time and which product they bought.
