Professional Collaborations

Updated May 14, 2026

This page explains how we work with the professionals, businesses, and service providers we recommend across Life in Mérida™ — on the website, YouTube channel, Substack, newsletter, social media, and in our private consultations, scouting trips, and tours.

This policy may be updated at any time. Please check back occasionally for changes.

An Ad-Free Experience

We have made a deliberate decision not to run third-party advertising on this site or our YouTube channel. No banner ads, no pop-ups, no AdSense, no paid display content. Most websites have gone overboard with advertising, and we want your time here to feel like reading a trusted friend’s notes — not navigating around a wall of ads.

That decision means we support the work in a different way: through our own paid offerings (guides, consultations, scouting trips, private research tours, and real estate services), and through occasional referral arrangements with a small number of professionals we already use, trust, and would recommend regardless.

What “Professional Collaborations” Means Here

The word affiliate gets used loosely online, and we are not fans of it. To most readers it implies that every recommendation is tied to a commission — that the writer earns something on every click, every booking, every purchase. That is not how we operate, and the word does not describe our relationships accurately.

We use the term Professional Collaborations instead. A Professional Collaboration is an ongoing relationship with a business, service provider, or individual we have personally used, vetted, and trust enough to put our name behind. Some of these collaborations involve compensation in some form. Many do not. The defining feature is not a payment — it is our personal experience with the work.

(If you came here looking for our Affiliate Disclosure, this page serves that purpose.)

How We Choose Who to Recommend

You’ll find that in Mérida, there are a lot of “promoters” — bloggers, social media accounts, group admins, concierges — recommend services they have never personally used, on the basis of a marketing or advertising fee. We do not operate that way, and we never have.

Every professional we recommend has met at least one of the following standards:

• We have used the service ourselves, often more than once.
• Someone we know and trust personally referred us to them, and we then vetted them through our own use.
• We have tested them over time for pricing consistency, service quality, and follow-through.

If a professional we recommend stops meeting our standards — pricing creeps, service slips, communication breaks down, the experience changes — we end the recommendation. No exceptions, and regardless of any compensation arrangement we may have in place at the time. The freedom to walk away is non-negotiable for us. It is what makes any recommendation we make worth reading.

The Vendor Directory

The Vendor Directory on lifeinmerida.com operates on the same principle, with one rule we want to make absolutely clear:

We do not accept payments in exchange for including any vendor or service provider in the Vendor Directory. There is no pay-to-play, no premium placement for sale, no sponsored slots, no listing fees, and no upgrade tier for visibility.

Inclusion is earned. Each listing represents a professional that Amy, Angel, or trusted colleagues, friends, and clients have personally used, vetted, and trust. The “Recommended By” field on each listing tells you exactly who has direct experience with that vendor. For privacy purposes, we do not publish names, only categories of the referral source.

If, after we have added a vendor to the directory, that vendor chooses to offer us a discount on services, a trade, a referral fee, or a finder’s fee, that is their decision and at their discretion. We consider those arrangements on a case-by-case basis. Such arrangements do not influence whether a vendor is included, how prominently they appear, or whether they remain listed. If a vendor stops meeting our standards, they come out of the directory — regardless of any arrangement in place.

When We Do Receive Compensation