Posted on Monday 12th of March 2007 at 12:07 in The Internet

Why are affiliate links frowned upon?

If you read a lot of blogs as I do you'll find plenty of people will post a link with an (aff) after it - denoting it as an affiliate link. Clicking on it would do something good for the owner (normally CPC payouts). However there's normally an angry backlash to users who don't bother with the (aff) tag and I can't really work out why.

Why I don't mind
I really don't care whether what I've clicked is an affiliate link or not; I'm an educated user and I'm able to make my own mind up as to what my next move is - so it's just a link to me. I also have a strong sense of empathy with other bloggers who just want to see some return on their time and affiliates are a great way to do that. I don't think you need to be told whether the blogger actually gets anything from your click because why should it matter? If the link was just a link would you click on it any differently? If it's not interesting then don't click on it. If it is, then do. Simple. The consequences of your actions to the site owner shouldn't matter.

Why people do mind
People often feel like they're being tricked or mis-directed by affiliate links and that's often not the case. True some bloggers can do this (I found the coolest site ever click here to view it [as an example] ) but more often than not they're just pointing you towards relevent goods or services; that they then receive a bonus based on your conversion.

Bloggers don't force you to click links or buy products so why should it matter what the outcome is? I personally like helping out people in a comparable situation to my own. Although I'd like to highlight that Seopher.com doesn't (at the time of writing) have any affiliate links. I appreciate why people use them and I've always considering hooking into the Amazon programme but haven't. Popular places like TheAppleBlog use it and I believe do rather well out of it.

Words from the Chow
It's just something I observed - JohnChow is happily placing (aff) tags after his links but he made a good comment:

John Chow dot Com is a blog about making money on the Internet and as such, it should be reasonable for readers to expect that there will be affiliate links. John Chow - 2007.

I think his point is a nice summary, why is it unexpected that bloggers use affiliate links from time to time? It's not misleading, it's just helping them pay the bills by directing you towards Supplier A rather than you finding Supplier B of your own free will.

 

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