How SiteKiln works, and what we will never do

Most platforms that say they are "for contractors" started with a good idea. Somewhere along the way the mission became the marketing, and the product became you.

SiteKiln is different. Here is how, and here is what we will never do.

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What SiteKiln is

A free plain-English resource for US construction workers. Guides and tools covering your rights, your money, your safety and your career.

• 257 guides, written like a buddy explaining it, not an attorney billing you
• 30 free tools, calculators and checkers that give you an answer and forget you existed
• All 50 states and DC, because licensing, liens and workers comp are state law and a national answer is usually the wrong answer

Everything is free. That is not a launch offer. That is the model.

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How we make money (honestly)

SiteKiln is funded by category-exclusive industry sponsorship.

That means:

• One sponsor per section. If an insurance broker sponsors the insurance section, their competitors cannot.
• "In partnership with [Sponsor]", clearly labeled, always. You will never wonder if something is an ad.
• Sponsors get visibility. They do not get editorial control. Ever.
• We choose sponsors based on whether they are genuinely useful to contractors, not who pays the most.

What we will not take money from:

• Payday lenders
• Claims management companies
• Data brokers
• Anyone who makes money by exploiting the people we are trying to help

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What we will never do

This is not a privacy policy. It is a promise.

We will never sell your data. Not to insurance brokers. Not to lead generation platforms. Not to "partners." Not to anyone.

We will never gate guides behind a paywall. If you need to know your rights at 2am on a Sunday, you should not need a credit card.

We will never let a sponsor edit a guide. They get their name on it. They do not get a red pen.

We will never run programmatic ads. No tracking pixels, no ad networks, no cookies following you around the internet selling you truck insurance because you read a guide about 1099s.

We will never become a lead generation platform. Our tools give you an answer and move on. We do not harvest your ZIP code, phone number and job description to sell to a "trusted partner."

We will never charge contractors for information about their own rights. That is the whole point.

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Why this matters

The information that protects contractors already exists. It is in the Internal Revenue Code, IRS publications, OSHA standards, state licensing board rules, state lien statutes and court decisions. It is just not written for the people who actually need it.

There are good people and good organizations doing important work in this industry. SiteKiln is not a replacement for any of that. But we noticed a gap: the practical, detailed, "what do I actually do now?" resource did not exist in one place, in plain English, for free.

So we built it.

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The tools are tools, not lead forms

Every free tool on SiteKiln works the same way:

1. You put your numbers in
2. You get your answer
3. That is it

We do not ask for your email to show you a result. We do not pass your details to anyone. We do not follow up with a sales call.

You came for an answer. You got one. Go back to work.

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A word about "free" platforms that are not free

There are platforms in this industry that position themselves as helping contractors. Some charge you a monthly fee to receive leads that cost extra on top. Some charge you per lead with no guarantee the customer will even pick up the phone. Some let customers leave reviews about you but charge you to respond properly or appear higher in the results. Some run "free tools" that are really forms. You enter your details, hit submit, and your phone number lands on a sales list you never agreed to.

That is not a platform for contractors. That is a platform that sells contractors.

The model is simple. They sit between you and the customer, take a cut from both sides, and call it a service. The customer thinks they are getting a vetted contractor. You think you are getting a qualified lead. The platform gets paid either way, whether the job happens or not.

We are not saying these platforms have no value. Some contractors build real businesses through them, especially early on. But the model is built on monetizing your presence, your data and your reputation. That is a fundamentally different thing from helping you.

SiteKiln does not sit between you and anyone. We do not sell leads, we do not charge for visibility, and we do not hold your reviews hostage. We give you the information to run your business properly, and then we get out of the way.

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While we are at it

Insurance lead sites. You fill in one form. Your phone rings fifteen times before lunch. Your details have been sold to every carrier on the panel, plus a handful of "partners" you never agreed to. Then they call you again next year because they kept your number. That is not comparison shopping. That is a data auction with your cell number as the lot.

Fast-track trade schools. Some are excellent. Some take a large tuition payment, rush people through the minimum possible training, and release them into the industry without the competence to work safely. The graduates struggle, the industry reputation takes another hit, and the school is already running the next cohort. We are not against fast routes into construction. We are against charging a fortune for inadequate ones. Before you enroll anywhere, check whether the credential is actually recognized by the licensing board in the state you want to work in.

Staffing agencies and their margins. A client pays a day rate for a carpenter. The carpenter sees a fraction of it. The agency keeps the rest for making a phone call and sending a text. Some agencies add genuine value through vetting, payroll and compliance. Plenty are a phone and a spreadsheet sitting between a contractor and the money they earned. If you are working through an agency, you should know what the client is being billed. Most never ask. Most are never told.

Being called a sub when you are really an employee. This one costs real money. If someone controls your hours, your methods and your tools but hands you a 1099, that may be misclassification, and it shifts payroll taxes, workers comp and overtime protection off them and onto you. The test is about control and independence, not what the paperwork says. It is worth understanding properly, because the people it costs most are the ones least likely to challenge it.

"Contractor business coaching." The social media version: someone who did eighteen months on the tools and now charges thousands for a course that says "charge more, post more, get systems." The advice is not wrong. It is just not worth what they are asking when it is the same material you would find in a free podcast or, now, in SiteKiln's Starting Out guides. There are proper business coaches and mentors in construction who are genuinely good. But for every one of those there are ten selling confidence at a premium to people who cannot afford to waste it.

Contractor marketing agencies. We are going to be honest here, because the founder runs a web design company, so this is us calling out our own industry. There are excellent agencies building proper websites, running genuine SEO and helping contractors grow. Some of them are our friends. But there is also a layer of agencies charging a monthly retainer for a template website, a handful of blog posts written by someone who has never held a level, and "SEO" that amounts to changing your page title once and sending you a report full of graphs you cannot read.

And then there is the hosting racket. Hosting a small business website costs very little per month. If someone is charging you hundreds and calling it "hosting and maintenance," ask what maintenance they are actually doing. Most months the answer is nothing. A good website matters. Good marketing matters. But the monthly retainer model exists mostly because it is easier to keep billing you than to justify the work. If your agency cannot explain in plain English what they did this month and why it is worth what you are paying, ask harder questions. And if they lock you out of your own website so you cannot leave, that tells you everything about whose interests they are protecting.

None of this is unique to construction. But construction workers are disproportionately targeted, because many are self-employed, time-poor and not used to reading the small print. SiteKiln exists partly because of this. If you understand your rights, your taxes, your contracts and your options, you are much harder to rip off.

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Why we ask for your email (and what we will never do with it)

Let us be straight about this.

If you just read guides and use tools: we collect nothing. No account needed, no tracking, no cookies beyond what keeps the site working.

If you sign up for the newsletter: we ask for your email, your state and your trade. That is it. No name, no age, no company, no phone number.

Why we ask: because a newsletter creates revenue that pays for SiteKiln so you do not have to. Sponsors pay to appear in it. That is how the lights stay on.

But here is the line we will never cross:

We will never give sponsors direct access to your email address. Ever. They pay for a slot in the newsletter. They do not get a list of who opened it, who clicked, or who you are.

That is everything that is wrong with internet privacy and marketing in general, platforms collecting your data and selling access to you as a product. You are the user here, not our product to sell to others.

Your email is used for the newsletter and nothing else. Never sold. Never shared. Never rented. Never "passed to a trusted partner." Unsubscribe any time, one click, no guilt trip, no "are you sure?" screen.

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A note on "free"

People are suspicious of free, and they are right to be. If something is free, you are usually the product.

SiteKiln is free because the product is sponsorship, not you.

Sponsors pay for visibility alongside content that contractors actually use. That is the deal. The content exists whether sponsors show up or not. If every sponsor pulled out tomorrow, the guides would still be here.

We would just have to drink less coffee.

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If you have read this far and you think "yeah, but they will change once they get big", bookmark this page. If we ever break these promises, screenshot it and call us out. We would deserve it.