The Social Contract of Affiliate Linking
Posted on February 12, 2008
Filed Under Weblosophy
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Recently I had good chat on Skype with one of my valued readers about the nature of posting Affiliate links.
In non-tech industries, the average reader won’t know the difference between an affiliate and non-affiliate link. They will click on the link, goto the site and purchase all the while having no idea that some guy is getting paid %%% just because they came through that link.
However in this industry almost all readers (expect the total noobs) will be aware %100 that any link to paid product/service from my site will eventually get me paid in one way or another.
Link redirect makes it look nice, but our readers are well aware that they can simply type the name of the good/service into google and go directly to the site in question and get the same value without me ever getting paid and the end-site just keeping the difference in unclaimed commissions. I know this because I sadly admit that I have done this exact same thing in the past when I signed up for a service and I just didn’t like the attitude of the person that wrote the article (i think it was some guy from Vancouver with the wrong attitude whose link I bypassed)
Affiliate Social Contract
This brings up the important point of the unwritten social contract between me the blogger and you the reader. Lets go through the main points
- While the desire to share information and better the world is prevalent, I cannot do this without an income.
- You the Reader comes to my site and reads an article.
- This article is usually the result of hours, days and weeks of research, knowledge and experimenting on my part.
- By you the Reader finding value in my article, I am effectively helping you to bypass the mistakes and learning that I had to go through and bringing you closer to the point of knowledge or monetization
- If you the Reader find value in my article then you also agree to make me an indirect payment of sorts by directing to the good or service through the provided affiliate link.
- In this way, I am indirectly paid by you for my efforts and continue to have the resources to experiment and push forwards on the frontier of the World wide web
It is that simple. So please consider next time you see an affiliate link on a site (cloaked or not) that by following that link you are in-fact saying thank-you and showing support for the blogger and assisting them to continue on their mission.
As long as these things are clearly understood by all parties, then we can move forward with prosperity for all.
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