Section 01What this is
Male Skincare Routine is a protocol library. The unit of publication here is not an article about skincare, it is an instruction set: the order of operations, the timings, the frequency schedule, the branch you take when something goes wrong, and the point at which a routine has done everything it can and something else is required.
That format is a deliberate response to how most skincare information is written. The typical article explains what an ingredient is and leaves you with no idea how often to use it, in what quantity, in what order, for how long before judging it, or what to do when your face objects. Those five questions are the entire practical problem, and they are the only questions this publication is interested in.
Section 02Who publishes it
Male Skincare Routine is published by Northbank Media. It is an independent publication. It is not owned by, funded by or affiliated with any skincare brand, retailer, clinic or manufacturer, and no company has any influence over what appears here.
Section 03How it is funded, stated plainly
Three things, and there is no fourth.
| Line | What it is | Status |
|---|---|---|
| The protocol library | Every protocol on this site, free to read | Free, permanently |
| The advanced protocol pack | A longer set of protocols delivered by email | Gated behind a newsletter subscription |
| Category assessment links | Retailer links on pages that assess a category against published criteria | Not live on any page today |
The first line costs you nothing and always will. The second requires an email address and nothing else. The third is the one that needs explaining, because affiliate arrangements are where most publications quietly stop being useful.
The rule we have set is narrow. We will only ever carry a retailer link on a page where we have set out assessment criteria for that category in advance, publicly, and assessed against them. The criteria are published on how we assess and they are written before anything is assessed against them. Any page carrying such a link will say so at the top of the page, not in a footer. We will not carry links on protocol pages, on condition pages or anywhere that a commercial interest could plausibly bend an instruction.
As of this revision, no affiliate link is live anywhere on this site, and every article states what it carries. We take no advertising, run no sponsored posts and accept no paid placements.
Section 04The two archive pages
Two pages on this site carry a single editorial link each to a named organisation. Both are archive pages that predate this rebuild and both were preserved at their original addresses. Each link was placed editorially by the publication as an example within the argument of the article. Neither was sold, paid for, commissioned, requested or previewed by the organisation named, and naming an organisation is not a recommendation of it. Both pages carry a publisher disclosure block stating this on the page itself.
Every other page on this site carries no commercial link of any kind and says so explicitly in a block at the end of the article. That is the whole of the commercial position and there is nothing else to disclose.
Section 05What we will not do
- Invent a study, a statistic or a source. Where we describe evidence we describe its shape: roughly how much controlled human research exists, how consistent it is, and what is missing. We do not manufacture sample sizes, effect sizes or author names.
- Rank businesses we have not assessed. A list of the best clinics in a city, compiled from other people's websites, is not information. Where a decision involves choosing a provider, we publish the criteria and the questions instead.
- Recommend individual branded products. We publish assessment criteria for categories, so that you can apply them to whatever is available where you shop. That is more durable than a product list and it does not decay when a formulation changes.
- Overstate a timeline. Most things in skincare take months. Every protocol here states the window before which a judgement is not meaningful, and several of them state plainly that the expected outcome is no visible change.
- Pretend a topical can do something it cannot. Pore structure, atrophic scarring, lost volume and deep static lines are not topical problems. We say so repeatedly because the alternative is watching people spend years on the wrong intervention.
Section 06Who this is for
Men who want to know what to do, in what order, and for how long, and who would rather have a three step routine that they run for a decade than an eleven step routine they abandon in March. The publication assumes you are willing to follow an instruction and unwilling to read a thousand words to find one.
It is written in British English for a UK audience, so the regulatory references, the sourcing and the seasonal advice are all UK specific. The protocols themselves travel, but the sun exposure guidance in particular assumes a British latitude.
Section 07What this is not
It is not medical advice, it is not a diagnosis, and it is not a substitute for seeing a pharmacist, a GP or a dermatologist. Several protocols here exist specifically to tell you when to stop following a protocol and go and see someone, and those sections are the most important ones on the site.
If a rash is spreading, a lesion is bleeding, changing or not healing, a mole has changed, or a reaction involves swelling or difficulty breathing, this site is the wrong place and you should get medical help.
Section 08Corrections
If something here is wrong, we want to know and we will change it. Corrections are made on the page itself and the revision number in the header is updated. We do not quietly delete pages that turn out to be wrong, because a corrected page is more useful than a missing one. Write to us through the contact page.