A small audience that actually installs things.

Kitsmith is a hand-verified directory of Mac apps. The people who read it are here for one reason: they're deciding what to put on their Mac today. No lifestyle content, no engagement bait, no adjacent audience diluting it. Every reader is a Mac software buyer, mid-decision.

The audience is small right now. I'd rather tell you that than sell you a number I'd have to defend later — and I'm not going to publish traffic figures until they're measured rather than estimated. What I can tell you is what the audience is made of, what a placement looks like, and what it costs.

Who this is for

You're launching a new Mac app. You have a landing page, a build, and no distribution. You need the first few hundred people who will actually download it and tell you what's broken — not a traffic spike that bounces.

You have an app already and it's stuck. It's good. It gets found by accident. You want to be in front of people who are already comparing three apps in your category, at the moment they're comparing them.

You sell to Mac people, but you're not an app. Hardware, docks, displays, keyboards, dev tools, hosting, design assets. Case by case, and only if I'd genuinely put it near the list. That's not a courtesy — an irrelevant ad costs me more than it pays.

This isn't for you if you want a ranking changed, a review you approve, an editor's pick, or you're not shipping yet. Those aren't negotiations — they're the answer to why the audience exists at all.

Editorial independence — the whole point

Kitsmith is worth advertising on for exactly one reason: readers believe the list. Everything here exists to keep that true.

• Rankings, picks and comparison verdicts are not for sale. There is no price. If a sponsor's app is third-best in its category, it stays third while they're sponsoring it.
• Sponsorship doesn't change a listing. Every listing is free and gets the same hand-verified treatment whether you pay or not. Buying a slot won't get an unlisted app listed — it has to clear the same bar as everything else.
• No advance warning, no veto. You'll find out a comparison went against you when everyone else does.
• Sponsored placements are labelled sponsored, in the same size type as the copy around them, before you read the pitch — not after.
• Every paid link carries rel="sponsored nofollow". Sponsorship buys attention. It does not buy search ranking, and I won't pretend otherwise to either of us.
• Sponsors are published — who paid, for what, when — permanently.
• You can have your money back. If a placement did nothing, say so within 14 days and I'll refund it. This is a small category and everyone knows everyone.

What's explicitly not for sale

• Position in any chart, category grid, or ranked list.
• The verdict in any comparison — including which one we'd skip.
• The wording of a listing, blurb, or caveat.
• Removal or softening of a criticism or an "unknown price" flag.
• Any badge implying editorial endorsement — pick, best, recommended, verified.
• Inclusion in the directory. Listing is free and earned; it cannot be bought.
• Removal of a competitor, or exclusivity that keeps one off the site.
• Anything a reader would have to click to discover was paid for.
• The subscriber list. Never sold, rented, shared or exported — no exceptions.

If you need any of those, we're not a fit, and I'd rather say so in the first email than the third.

What you can buy

Nothing is rate-carded yet, because pricing against an unmeasured audience would be guessing. Tell me what you're trying to achieve and I'll tell you honestly whether Kitsmith can do it — and roughly what it should cost. Founding rates are set against today's audience and locked for six months even as the list grows; early sponsors should get the upside of being early.

• The weekly digest — one clearly-labelled placement per issue.
• A category — a sponsor block beneath a category page's listings, never inside them.
• A launch announcement — for something genuinely new and shipping.

Get in touch

Sponsor log

Every sponsor, what they bought, and when — published permanently. Sponsorship is a fact about this site, so it gets published like every other fact on it.

No sponsors yet. This log starts with the first one.