Awesome Stuff to Buy has been running since May 2012. Today it lists 2,400+ products you can still buy, all of them chosen because they are strange, clever, genuinely useful, or funny enough to send to a friend. This page explains how things get here, how we keep the listings honest, and how the site makes money.
What this site is, and is not
This is a discovery site, not a testing lab. We do not claim to have personally used every product on here, and you should be suspicious of any site with thousands of listings that says otherwise. What we do is find things worth knowing about, describe them accurately, and send you to the retailer to decide for yourself.
Where a product is a pre-order, a crowdfunding project, or a limited run, we say so in the description. Those carry real risk of delay or cancellation and you deserve to know before you click.
How something makes the cut
The bar is simple: would we send this to a friend? A product needs to be interesting on sight, actually purchasable, and something you probably have not already seen everywhere. We favor things with a clear hook over generic versions of products that already exist in a hundred variations.
We check that a product is not already on the site before adding it, and we file each one into every gift guide it genuinely belongs in rather than padding categories.
Some of the work behind the scenes is automated, and we would rather say so. AI tools help us scout new products, draft descriptions and write parts of the gift guides, and the gift finder uses AI to match your description to products on the site. Every listing links to the real product page, so you can always check the details for yourself.
How we keep listings accurate
Old affiliate sites rot. Prices drift, products sell out, and links quietly die. A few automated jobs run against the catalog to limit that:
- Prices for Amazon products come from Amazon’s own Creators API and refresh several times a day. Each one shows the time it was checked, and if we cannot get a fresh price we hide it rather than show you an old one.
- Product links are checked on a schedule. When a product is discontinued, we take it off the gift guides and point its page to a search for something similar instead of a dead page. When Amazon has no live offer for something, its price disappears until it is back in stock.
None of this is perfect. Retailers change listings without warning and some things slip through. If you spot something wrong, tell us and we will fix it.
How the site makes money
Two ways, and both are worth being upfront about.
Affiliate commissions. Most links here are affiliate links, including Amazon Associates and Skimlinks. If you buy something after clicking one, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Commission rates vary by retailer, and they do not decide what gets featured or where it appears.
Paid product promotion. Brands can pay to have a product shown as the first item in the homepage feed for three days, and that placement is labeled Sponsored. Every submission is reviewed before it runs, and anything that does not fit the site is declined and refunded. Paying does not buy a positive description, and it does not affect the ranking of any other product on the site.
Corrections
If a price is wrong, a link is broken, or we have described something inaccurately, get in touch and we will correct it. If you have made something you think belongs here, you can submit a product.
