

Ask HN: Why the Affiliate Link Hatred? - gdubs

When a project containing affiliate links is featured here, invariably there are comments scorning the OP for being "unethical". While I see the ethical concern for journalistic publications like, say, the Atlantic, I'm not sure I see a problem with them being used to bring money to someone's blog or side project. What are the community's thoughts on this?
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throwaway420
It's only unethical if you alter your honest opinion about a product in order
to promote its affiliate link. But otherwise if there's full disclosure and
there's nothing deceptive about the link, then there's nothing wrong with
affiliate links.

To some extent, its only natural to be a bit cautious about affiliate links
because some shady "internet marketers" have used affiliate links in dishonest
ways in the past - hiding the fact that they were affiliate links and not
disclosing the fact that there is a paid relationship that could affect
somebody's opinion.

But that doesn't imply that all or even most affiliate links are bad. On the
contrary, I think more bloggers should ditch all kinds of crazy ads that track
you across the internet and switch to simple affiliate links. If you run a
blog about surfing or photography or whatever, you already know what types of
products your readers are going to be interested in and can make money by
providing quality product recommendations. Affiliate links seem like a natural
fit to a lot of smaller, niche blogs as it really rewards the effort spent in
creating high quality content because people will trust your recommendations
more.

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booruguru
Tech nerds have a pathological/ideological aversion to making money. I can't
count how many interviews I've read/watched in which some startup founder
congratulates himself for not worrying about how to build a profitable
business (all the while accepting VC funding). This is why we get so many
startups that crash-and-burn or acqui-hired (and then shuttered).

Affiliate marketing is an incredibly powerful tool that is under-utilized by
small businesses/startups. But affiliate marketing serves no purpose other
than to sell stuff and make money; It is nakedly sales driven, hence the
animus towards affiliate links. Nobody should "want" to make money on the
Internet, right? It should happen by accident.

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larrys
Jealousy, slippery slope, somehow putting a bias on the person collecting
money. In some cases, in other places, the fact that people claim to donate
the money to charity seems to dampen the negatives which doesn't make much
sense.

I personally don't have an issue with it and I find it annoying when people
(on blogs for example) point out that a link _isn't_ an affiliate link in a
"I'm to good for this" fashion. As if money isn't important or they are above
it all.

Irony is of course that a large part of HN is being a shill [1] for YC.

[1] I don't have a problem with that either even though the use of the word
shill might indicate that.

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throwaway420
I'm not sure why, but I agree that there is sometimes a bit of a weird bias on
HN against making money online - which is odd for a community of people who
are ostensibly devoting a good deal of their attention to making side-projects
that make money.

What bothers me the most about this is the people that brag about using ad
blockers to block ads and then use the same types of crappy ads to monetize
their own sites. That's sort of an aside though, and doesn't apply to
everybody. It's just a bit of a weird bit of hypocrisy that I've seen in some
folks that is modestly irritating.

(I don't use ad blockers. I just refuse to visit shitty sites that load up way
too many low-quality ads)

