How We Make Money

How the money flows

When a family contacts Assisted Living Magazine, our concierge helps them tour and evaluate communities drawn from our full ranked database of senior living options nationwide. If the family ultimately moves into a community that partners with us, that community pays Assisted Living Magazine a referral fee. If the family moves into a non-partner community, Assisted Living Magazine is not paid. The recommendation is the same either way.

You will never be charged by Assisted Living Magazine. Your cost at the community is not increased because you found it through us — referral fees come out of the community’s existing marketing budget, not your bill.

What partner status does and doesn’t affect

Whether a community partners with Assisted Living Magazine has no impact on:

• Whether it appears in our directory.
• Its score under our public Rank Methodology.
• Where it ranks in search results or “best of” lists.
• Which communities our concierge recommends to your family.
• The content, photos, or data shown on its profile page.
• The reviews, inspection records, or staffing data we publish.

If the best fit for your family is a community that doesn’t partner with us, that’s what we recommend.

What we don’t do

A few practices are common in the senior care referral industry. Assisted Living Magazine doesn’t engage in any of them.

We don’t characterize specific competitors. “Industry-typical” refers to common revenue models in senior care referral; some companies use one of these, some use several.

If you’ve used other senior living sites, you may have encountered these models. We chose against all of them because each one creates a quiet incentive to recommend the highest-paying option rather than the best-fit option.

Editorial independence

Our writers, analysts, and concierge team operate under no-influence rules.

• Our full Rank Methodology is documented and open for review.
• Every ranking uses CMS inspection records, state regulator data, inspection reports, and resident reviews — not partner-supplied marketing material.
• In the rare case we publish anything provided or paid for by a third party, such as a guest column, it is clearly identified as sponsored content.
• If you spot an error, email [email protected]. We publish corrections, not silent edits.

What we don’t claim

Assisted Living Magazine is a directory and concierge service, not a regulator or a guarantor. A few honest caveats.

• Inclusion in our directory is not an endorsement. A community appearing in Assisted Living Magazine does not mean we vouch for it personally — we provide ranked, data-backed information; the decision is yours.
• No online directory, including Assisted Living Magazine, is a substitute for visiting a community, talking to staff, and meeting other residents.

Other revenue

A small share of Assisted Living Magazine’s operating revenue comes from licensing anonymized market data to research firms, universities, and journalists studying senior living. These partnerships do not affect rankings, recommendations, or directory content. They are not material to how Assisted Living Magazine is funded — referral fees from move-ins are.

We do not, and will not, sell your personal contact information to data brokers or marketing firms.

Questions about how we operate?

We treat this page as a public commitment. If something on it stops being true, we update the page and date the change.

If you have questions about our funding, our methodology, or how a specific recommendation was made, email [email protected].