Advertising & affiliate disclosure
Balkan Lakes is free to read. To cover its costs, the site may show advertising and partner (affiliate) links, and pages may be sponsored. This page explains how. The list below always shows what runs right now.
What runs now
Partner links
Some links to accommodation, tours, car rental or outdoor gear may be partner links: if you book or buy through them, we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. We join partner programmes directly or through affiliate networks such as Awin, which record the click so the commission can be credited. Partner links appear in boxes labelled “Partner links”, after the practical information on a page, and in guides, where a line at the top of the article says that it contains them. They never appear inside the facts about a lake.
Advertising
Ads are labelled “Advertisement”. They come from an ad network such as Google AdSense, which chooses the ad, or are banners we place ourselves; we decide only where an ad may appear. We use no pop-ups, no video or sound that plays by itself, and no ads that stick to the screen or expand. There are no ads on maps, in filters or in search, on this page, on the legal pages or on the Report an issue page, and never more than one ad on a phone screen at a time.
Sponsorship
A tourism board or an outdoor brand may sponsor a page, such as a country or activity page. A sponsor’s banner says “Sponsored by” with the sponsor’s name. It takes the place of an ad and never adds to it.
What money never changes
Advertising, partner links and sponsorship never change the facts we publish, which lakes are included, the order of lists and search results, the “Recommended” order, which lakes are featured, or how we check information.
Your choices
Ads from an ad network load only after you accept advertising in the cookie banner, and you can change your choice at any time with “Cookie settings” at the bottom of every page (shown while the site uses an ad network). If you don’t accept, you see no ads from the network, or, where the network offers them, only non-personalised ads. Banners we place ourselves and partner links set no cookies on this site. Your location (“Near me”) is never passed to partners or ad networks.