
Making $1 million from affiliate links on "Ad-Free" blog - iamchmod
http://on-advertising.tumblr.com/post/42994773187/maria-popova-have-you-made-1m-on-affiliate-ads-while
======
kevinalexbrown
This discussion is quite long, but for me it's really simple:

You don't say your site is ad-free if you get paid for links. Especially
inside the donations pitch.

I don't care if you take donations, have a paywall, or sell advertisements
(the ballet does all three, and that's awesome). Just be honest.

A maxim I use when trying to establish honesty: If you write a sentence that a
substantial number of readers are misinterpreting, it's usually fair to call
it an inaccurate sentence. If it's knowingly left there, it's usually fair to
call it dishonest. Exceptions would include technically difficult material.

Edit: In this case, both the group paying her (Amazon) and Wikipedia refer to
affiliate links as ads. I haven't polled her general readership, but that's a
reasonable proxy for how the terms "ad-free" and "affiliate links" are
interpreted.

<https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing>

~~~
radley
The difference is between solicited and unsolicited paid promotions. Popova
thinks there's an obvious difference which goes without saying. Bleymaier
thinks there's no difference and therefore attacked Popova for being morally
bankrupt.

Sound about right?

~~~
cubicle67
The deception seems not about how to classify affiliate links, but rather
deliberately leading the reader to infer that the blog's only income source is
donations

~~~
radley
Maybe so. It all boils down to recommendation versus promotion. I hate ads yet
I'm totally comfortable with affiliate links on blog, so I consider her site
to be ad-free.

Oddly, I don't like affiliate links in forums like HN.

~~~
chobo
Why do you think one is okay but not the other?

~~~
harlanlewis
I feel the same as grandparent, but it's a blurry line. Ideally, promoted ads
_should be_ recommendations. Buy more than just reach to a demo, instead
ensure a qualified voice authentically highlights your benefits - more akin to
social recommendations from friends than banner ads.

This is rarely attempted in a world of publications that depend on ad volume
and outsourced ad buyer supply, but examples exist. The webcomic Penny Arcade
recently ran a Kickstarter to achieve freedom from ads, but found itself
answering questions like "What if I love ads?" (<http://www.penny-
arcade.com/2012/07/20/what-if-i-love-ads>) because they'd built a reputation
of only advertising products they would feel comfortable endorsing even
without an adbuy (can't find a direct link to when they talk about this, but
it's out there somewhere).

------
aresant
I am surprised that the FTC's position on this issue is a footnote of the
original article and the HN discussion.

From FTC Assistant Deputy Rich Cleland: "a disclosure must be made when a
blogger is recommending something and using an affiliate link. He went on to
say that “the recommendation triggers the disclosure requirement.”(1)

There is no wiggle room here.

Maria Popova needs to disclose the relationship with her advertisers (Amazon).

The FTC has a gargantuan job ahead of them w/regard to enforcement, but that's
no excuse especially given the content that Popova writes about.

(1) [http://lovell.com/corporate-blogs/ftc-guidelines-include-
aff...](http://lovell.com/corporate-blogs/ftc-guidelines-include-affiliate-
links/)

~~~
smackfu
Yeah, a lot of prominent bloggers are violating that rule then. Marco Arment
(<http://www.marco.org/2013/01/06/baby-stuff-review>), Jeff Atwood
([http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/06/because-everyone-
st...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/06/because-everyone-still-needs-
a-router.html)), not to mention The Wirecutter blog.
(<http://thewirecutter.com>)

------
paulsutter
Affiliate links are absolutely a form of advertising. It's called CPA (cost
per action), and its one of the two major categories of performance
advertising. The other category of performance advertising is CPC (cost per
click), which is most common in search advertising but is also used by Google
for their Adwords on-page ads. Banner ads are often sold as CPM (cost per
thousand), which is often called brand advertising as opposed to performance.

Setting aside semantics, ad-free publications are expected to be influence-
free. The minute a publication starts to optimize their affiliate links, they
are allowing their advertising revenue to influence their publication.

Finally, as another poster has pointed out: using affiliate links is not her
mistake. Her mistake is claiming to be ad-free when she is not. And claiming
to be supported solely by donations, when she is not.

Both of these mistakes are fraud according to the FTC and also under
California law (which applies to her readers in California). She is most
exposed to a class-action lawsuit from a lawsuit mill. Literally, there are
law firms whose main line menu says "press 4 if you have received a class-
action lawsuit from us".

Changing the wording in response to a complaint, then changing it back after
creating an LLC will be the crucial step that the law firm uses to pursue the
case against her personally and against the LLC.

~~~
petegrif
Thank you.

------
run4yourlives
I don't get this at all.

So she has a site full of affiliate links because (holy crap) she wants to
make some cash. Is OP mad about this? If so, meh, get a life.

So she says her site is 100% ad free. It is. Affiliate links aren't "ads" in
any definition a reader would have unless it is somehow immoral to make a
living.

So she asks for donations in order to keep ads off her site while at the same
time employing affiliate links. I missed the part where there is a law about
having multiple sources of income, and so did the company you most likely work
for. Would you be happier if she put this entire thing behind a paywall?

I really don't understand the logic behind the critique. She provides a
service, if you like the service, you get to consume it _completely without
payment_. Now you're bitching because you've found out that she has found a
way to continue to offer this service to you _for free_?

The beauty about "reviews" is that if you don't like them - for whatever
reason - you stop listening. It's irrelevant whether the person is paid or not
for a favourable review if you actually like the end product and agree with
the review!

The entire idea of "immorality of paid reviews" screams of teenage "your band
sold out because lots of people like you".

~~~
ChuckMcM
Affiliate links are advertisements, the best kind, they have a call to action
"buy this" and a built in tracking mechanism. When you watch CSI on television
and they drink pepsi (not coke, not generic cola) that creates a link in your
brain that the 'cool kids' on CSI drink pepsi, and a billion studies have
shown that this influences peoples choice when they are sitting in the soda
aisle at the store buying soft drinks.

She writes a blog, it has loyal readers, she recommends things. People who
click on her recommendations and buy them sends her money. Similar studies
have shown that when the amount of 'reward' you get from your actions is
easily tied to those actions, you modify your actions to maximize your reward,
even without thinking consciously about it.

That is why journalists try to put an impermeable wall between the money they
are paid, and what they write. They are no more incented to write good things
than they are bad things, they are _more likely_ to write the truth as they
see it.

She is on record as preaching independence for financial gain, and yet has set
up her blog such that she can shade her words to increase or decrease the
financial return. So she lies. Probably to herself as much as anyone else, I
mean most folks don't start out trying to lose their integrity, it happens
slowly over time.

One day she will wake up, reading a column she wrote with a glowing take on a
complete piece of crap book with a high resale price because her declining
readership is returning less and less money and her need to pump up the sales
to cover her bills that just won't go away.

This has caused nervous breakdowns in people, when the fiction they have
carefully woven inside their own head to cover their journey down the road
into hell suddenly breaks down. Athletes who "don't do steroids" but that one
time they needed a bit of HGH to heal up in time for the All Star break or get
ready for spring training, a way to just be more of themselves during the post
season, not cheating right? They would be this strong/healthy/whatever with
regular workouts and physical therapy but the timing is just off, it's not
cheating it's just dealing with the schedule that is imposed. The financial
trader who just needs a bit more focus on this one day and decides to pop an
Adderall or truck driver that does a bit of cocaine to get through just this
month's deliveries.

If it were a new story, it might be interesting but it isn't. Its a sad story.
It ends badly. And this article gives as good a narrative as any about how
these stories start.

~~~
clicks
I was mostly agreeing with what you said.. until you somehow conflated
steroids to ADHD medication.

Steroids are never prescribed by medical experts, ADHD medication is.

~~~
fsckin
Allergies and asthma are two common reasons steroids are prescribed.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I had a nasty case of poison oak which required steroids to clear up, it was
not fun at all.

------
jonknee
Curious that I didn't see this quoted...

<http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/donate/>

> Keeping it a clean, ad-free reading experience — which is important to me
> and, I hope, to you — means it’s subsidized by the generous support of
> readers like you: directly, through donations, and indirectly, whenever you
> buy a book on Amazon from a link on Brain Pickings, which sends me a small
> percentage of its price.

Update: it looks like that and the site's footer explanation of Amazon links
were both added recently (they don't appear in the Wayback Machine:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20130116024042/http://www.brainpi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20130116024042/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/donate/)
)

~~~
ken_railey
Probably because she added that after the articles in question were written.

~~~
guylhem
That's more than fishy. I wonder if they will vanish in 6 months

------
swanson
If anyone is interested in turning on Amazon Affiliates for a technical blog,
I collected some data over the past few months.

I put a single affiliate link on my technical book reviews (sample:
[http://swanson.github.com/writeup/2012/10/29/complications.h...](http://swanson.github.com/writeup/2012/10/29/complications.html)).

The numbers: <https://gist.github.com/swanson/4711006>

Not exactly rolling in cash yet :)

~~~
fatalerrorx3
Technology blogs with affiliate links and/or adsense are known to have much
lower conversion rates than average because tech savvy people tend to be more
blind to ads (and many even use adblockers), and these users are typically
aware that these programs exist.

I know I for one always hover over links before I click on them to see if
they're affiliate links, and I can't remember the last time I clicked on an ad
on Google or elsewhere.

~~~
voidlogic
"I know I for one always hover over links before I click on them to see if
they're affiliate links"

Do you do this because you are curious, or because you don't want to click the
link if it is an affiliate link? If the latter is the case, it seems strange
you would not want to support the tech blogs you read, at no extra cost to
yourself, if you already intend to purchase the item linked.

~~~
clicks
I think issue here is if you see an affiliate link, you start to question
whether the author is heartily suggesting something because he genuinely likes
it and wants to recommend it to you or he's just a bored blogger posting a new
link on a new day, because that is what he does. On a side note, it seems to
me that the author-reader trust is arguably preserved if the author of the
articles does not choose what ads appear on his site because it absolves him
of the cloud of doubt that he might have ulterior motives.

Maybe a lot of the folks doing this are the ones that used to see ads before
they started using Adblock, and they still have a memory of ads leaving a bad
taste in their mouth. Of course all of this is questioning the model of an ad-
supported Internet. This is something I'm still conflicted about -- I really
don't want to see ads on Google et al., I mean I _really_ don't, I really wish
I could give Google $50/month and tell them hey just focus on the experience,
don't show me ads, and I'll be your customer. I'd do this for a whole array of
sites on which I begrudgingly use Adblock and other extensions that prevent
affiliate links from appearing.

~~~
swanson
I agree about the motivation aspect - should I write a glowing review of a
book that I didn't like to generate more clicks? Even if I write honestly,
will it be perceived as disingenuous because of affiliate links?

I turned on the affiliates links as an experiment and haven't changed my style
- though I always try to find at least something positive about a book. I'll
probably revisit it in the future and decide if the (thus far) meager income
is worth dealing with the reader-trust issues.

~~~
joshstrange
I agree, I don't have a problem with affiliate ads but if the article in
question is a gushingly positive review without any negatives mentioned and
they are using an affiliate link then I tend to question the motivation behind
writing it. I also will then look for a review that doesn't contain an
affiliate id or one that covers the pros and cons giving a full review instead
of an advertisement disguised as a review.

------
kmfrk
A, perhaps, more nuanced analysis:

1\. [http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-
salmon/2013/02/13/blogonomics...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-
salmon/2013/02/13/blogonomics-maria-popova-edition/)

2\. [http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/02/16/maria-
popov...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/02/16/maria-popovas-
blogonomics-part-2/)

~~~
j_s
Thanks for the links, including a response at the end of the first link.

From the second link:

    
    
      > To a certain extent, this is a female thing:  positive happy 
      > bloggers tend to be female, as do their readers.*
      > ...
      > *Update: This sentence has not gone down well in the Twittersphere.
    

Surprise!??

~~~
homosaur
Yeah unfortunately that one sentence has overridden this whole article because
of the nature of Twitter--people keep retweeting and piling on without ever
reading the article. It was a really dumb statement though. I don't even
understand how to begin with that. Wouldn't you assume audience is more
related to content than how positive or how many vaginas someone has? This
just seems to focus on the wrong thing...

~~~
gojomo
I wonder if there would have been the same reaction had Salmon instead written
his observation with leftish-academic word choice:

 _To a certain extent, this is a gendered phenomenon: positive happy bloggers
are disproportionately female, as are their readers._

Same idea – which may or may not be true, but it seems plausible enough to
entertain for the purposes of casual opinionated discussion. The rephrasing
gives it more intellectual and euphemistic padding, as a defense against knee-
jerk outrage.

------
psadri
I agree with the main point of the article.

However, I can tell you that your $1M in affiliate revenue on 1.2M UV for a
literary blog is way off. Your assumption of 10% conversion is off by at least
an order of magnitude.

The more likely rate is probably less than 1%. This would bring the total
amount to around $100K in your calculation.

~~~
aristus
I do (much lower scale) affiliate links and book reviews, mostly for the data,
rather than the money. But my conversion rate is something like 23%. With a
good niche and qualified traffic (eg most traffic coming from people genuinely
linking to you because the content is awesome and relevant) 10% is not
impossible.

~~~
jonknee
Your conversion rate from unique visitors to sales is 23%? What type of
traffic are you talking about? That's absurdly high and would still be high
for a site that directly sells something, let alone a site that has a link to
a book.

~~~
j_s
People that do the work to find these types of niches don't usually just
announce them to the world on Hacker News.

~~~
jonknee
The amount of traffic is not a giveaway of the vertical. 23% of a 100 visits
is something entirely different than 23% of 1,000,000 visits.

~~~
j_s
When you said 'type' (of traffic) above I did not think that meant 'amount'.

I do agree that amount of traffic is not a giveaway.

~~~
jonknee
Well I meant both how much and what type (as in direct, referral, organic
search engine, paid search engine, etc).

23% would be unbelievable for direct traffic like the blog in question has,
but less so for search engine traffic (if you have links to what people were
searching about they are many many times more likely to both click and convert
than if they are just on their daily read through).

He/she could also have meant 23% conversion as reported through Amazon which
means 23% of the people who clicked ended up purchasing, also a much more
believable number.

------
JacobAldridge
I've been following this story, as my co-founder and I are in the midst of an
advertising-policy debate.

I think the main issue was Popova not disclosing, even in some tiny font
somewhere, that there were affiliate links. She may have avoided that in order
to hold the "ad-free" moral high ground.

The FTC guidelines on this are an interesting read if you make endorsements,
even affiliate links, on your site. I'll track it down.

EDIT - Here it is:
[http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005revisedendorsementguides...](http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005revisedendorsementguides.pdf)

~~~
cynwoody
>I think the main issue was Popova not disclosing, even in some tiny font
somewhere, that there were affiliate links.

A visit to her site reveals that she has corrected that defect. Down at the
bottom, we now see:

    
    
        Brain Pickings participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates
        Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means
        for sites to earn commissions by linking to Amazon. In more human
        terms, this means that whenever you buy a book on Amazon from a link
        on here, I get a small percentage of its price. That helps support
        Brain Pickings by offsetting a fraction of what it takes to maintain
        the site, and is very much appreciated.

~~~
jtheory
That's clever wording:

    
    
      That helps support Brain Pickings by offsetting a fraction
      of what it takes to maintain the site[...]
    

It implies that only a small amount of the costs to maintain the site are paid
for by affiliate link earnings, but _technically_ something like 200/1 is also
a "fraction".

------
entangld
I've read the books she recommends on her website and they are usually
thoughtful pieces of writing.

I don't think her statement, that she uses Amazon data to find other books her
readers enjoy, is an admission of immoral conduct. She said a quarter of the
books she recommends are from information she gained from Amazon. I believe
she's referring to how she discovered them and not the reason she recommends
them. Of course I am giving her the benefit of the doubt because the quality
of the content on her site is generally high.

She serves her niche of intellectuals fairly well and I think spamming with
lower quality content for the sake of making money would be noticed quickly by
them. The donations on top of the affiliate links seems a bit much, but I
think people might still donate and or purchase in order to show support for
her work.

~~~
clicks
> I don't think her statement, that she uses Amazon data to find other books
> her readers enjoy, is an admission of immoral conduct. She said a quarter of
> the books she recommends are from information she gained from Amazon.

Visiting the website for myself now: <http://www.brainpickings.org/>

I think it's clear that she's deliberately and forcefully fishing for clicks
on Amazon affiliate link hits. I mean, just take a look at the number of large
images (every one of them being affiliate links), one after another,
encompassing probably 6-page'fuls at times (and I'm on a 1080p res.). I'm a
person who's usually very well aware of what is an affiliate link or not...
and yet I found myself strongly wanting to click the images. I don't buy it
for a single second that Popova is not exactly aware of what she is doing. Her
repeated requests for donations (after _every_ post, in which she stresses
that this is a site that doesn't have advertisements) leave no room for doubt
-- I strongly believe she is disrespecting the user in a very fundamental way
by misleading them like this and playing them on.

~~~
subpixel
As I write this, there are over 40 Amazon affiliate links on her homepage
alone. And as you correctly point out, they're prominently placed (esp. using
images) to achieve maximum click-through.

She says the affiliate revenue she's downplaying is way, way less than what
the article assumes. Well, if I were her I'd:

1) disclose all my Amazon revenue and

2) donate it every month to someplace awesome

That'd probably get her more monthly subscribers, earn her more money, and
silence the haters. Unfortunately her dissembling on this issue so far sort of
edges me into the latter category.

~~~
yobfountain
That is very noble of you.

------
micahgoulart
Here's Maria's response to these accusations:
[http://www.scilogs.com/next_regeneration/internet-curator-
ma...](http://www.scilogs.com/next_regeneration/internet-curator-maria-popova-
responds-to-unfair-accusations-with-civility/)

In particular, she states, _"Regarding his Tumblr article – first of all,
those numbers are ludicrous! If Amazon gave me even a tenth of that a year
after Uncle Sam takes his fair share, I’d be delighted. Delighted!"_

~~~
hammock
That seems to imply that before taxes she is making at least $100k

~~~
jongraehl
Assuming literal honesty, "if 1/10 of that, i'd be thrilled!" does suggest
that the actual figure is at least 1/20th of whatever "that" was (1.2m/yr?)
(but could still be lower).

------
zallarak
This post seems too dramatic - it looks like she is simply admitting to
learning from what her readers read. If you build an audience writing a
certain way, it's likely that your readers also have something of value to
contribute and inspecting what they read and in turn offering it to other
readers on your website is clever, if anything.

Also, it's just not nice to publish personal email communication. Just bring
it up with her over a coffee or something.

~~~
corresation
I don't think it's particularly dramatic -- many of us find blogs in general
to have more moral ambiguity/flexibility, and less of a understanding of the
power of persuasion. This is an absolutely rampant issue (did Marco or Atwood
recommend that hard drive or coffee carafe because it's the best...or because
it's one that they could post an affiliate link to? What inspired that post?)

------
rflrob
> the simplest summary question I can think to ask is: What do you think
> Richard Feynman would do in your situation?

At the risk of getting downvoted for a silly comment, there's the Feynman
Flowchart: [http://onionesquereality.wordpress.com/2008/01/20/what-
would...](http://onionesquereality.wordpress.com/2008/01/20/what-would-
feynman-do/)

------
jessep
Funny thing is: she could make more money by telling people she gets support
from the links. She just needs to spin it correctly.People want to buy these
books, knowing it is helping her would only make them want to buy them more.

I worked at a non-profit tech company that did a campaign where we got people
to use our affiliate code to make purchases on Amazon. People liked doing it,
it made them feel good. It also gave them excuse to feel good about going on a
buying spree on Amazon.

I bet she could significantly increase revenue buy having a button under each
book she links to that said, "Help keep this site going, buy this book".

And it would also sidestep this whole controversy.

~~~
DustinCalim
I think this is the best idea/solution in this thread...

------
jonknee
> There are typically 3 articles published per day, and most pages have more
> than one article, but for the most conservative number of ad impressions
> let's assume one article per page, yielding 6 ads per page. At 3M page views
> per month, this is about 18M affiliate ads served per month, or 216M
> impressions per year.

It's cute that the author thinks number of links = "impressions" and that it
has some sort of effect on the number of sales. In reality it's mostly the
same people viewing the site every day and very few will end up buying a book,
even fewer from the affiliate link (there appears to also always be a link for
finding it in your local public library). You could put 100 links in a post
and have no more sales than with 1, what matters is if your readers find the
book interesting enough to want to pay to read it.

~~~
jmcgough
I believe they are using "impressions" in the technical sense.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impression_(online_media)>

------
geuis
Couple of issues with this:

1) The screenshot mentioned in the story shows no clear indications of the
advertising he refers to. [http://on-
advertising.tumblr.com/post/42994492644/donation-p...](http://on-
advertising.tumblr.com/post/42994492644/donation-pitch-included-at-the-end-of-
each-brain)

2) Author has included a massive wall of text with little structure. No
headings or sections. Makes it harder to get through it.

3) Most important of all, the author does not provide a clear link to the site
of the person he is criticizing. This makes it harder for third parties (us)
to evaluate his claims.

------
fatalerrorx3
It looks she now has a disclaimer at the bottom of the page that says they
participate in the Amazon Affiliate program which allows website owners the
ability to earn a commission for products that are linked to.

~~~
alistairSH
Sure, but it's located below the donation section, which still claims to be ad
free. And the site itself is JAMMED with affiliate links disguised as pretty
pictures. She can justify it however she wants, but at the end of the day,
she's misleading readers (IMO).

~~~
ceol
_> And the site itself is JAMMED with affiliate links disguised as pretty
pictures._

Those "pretty pictures" are often illustrations from the work shown to assist
in the review. That's quite the undertone you're wringing out of her rather
mundane actions.

~~~
GHFigs
Attaching affiliate links to those images is not "mundane". It effectively
them into banner ads. She's covering her site in click targets that make her
money _and then_ claiming to be ad-free on the same page.

~~~
ceol
It really is, considering the number of people who use Amazon's affiliate
service. She's not sneaking in links or using a URL shortener or something.
She's taking a part of her review that might entice people to buy the book—
the illustrations— and adding an affiliate link to them. Pretty mundane.
Personally, it just hasn't crossed that line into "shady behavior used by
spammers."

~~~
GHFigs
_She's taking a part of her review that might entice people to buy the book—
the illustrations— and adding an affiliate link to them._

Yes. That's called advertising. Something every page of her site denies it
has.

~~~
ceol
Er, no. I'm not saying those images exist solely to entice someone into
clicking them. _That_ would be advertising.

Those images fulfill a purpose to the reader: They deepen the review.

~~~
GHFigs
In what way does an affiliate link deepen the review?

~~~
ceol
They don't. The images do. She is merely utilizing the images to also be
affiliate links.

~~~
GHFigs
What "merely"? That's exactly what I said she was doing.

------
stuffihavemade
"from Amazon after her readers click the ads in her articles and go on to make
purchases (she sees, and makes commissions off of, the other items they place
in their shopping cart, including books that she didn’t link to)."

How does this work exactly? Is there a cookie with the affiliate's id set when
you click on an affiliate's link?

~~~
gregorymichael
Any purchases made within 24 hours are credited to your account. You can send
them to Amazon in buy a $9 book, and if they buy a $2500 TV four hours later,
you get your 6%.

~~~
makomk
Yeah, I've even seen pop-unders on shady sites whose entire purpose seems to
be to set Amazon affiliate cookies in the hope of making money off unrelated
Amazon purchases.

------
binaryorganic
I'm not sure what her support page used to say, but it seems perfectly clear
at present. In the same sentence she both says she wants to keep the site ad-
free AND confirms that one of the way she does this is through affiliate
links:

"Keeping it a clean, ad-free reading experience — which is important to me
and, I hope, to you — means it’s subsidized by the generous support of readers
like you: directly, through donations, and indirectly, whenever you buy a book
on Amazon from a link on Brain Pickings, which sends me a small percentage of
its price."

Seems like she's being fully transparent.

~~~
tobyjsullivan
The Web Archive tells all:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20130116151028/http://www.brainpi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20130116151028/http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/donate/)

The last snapshot was a month ago but it clearly didn't say it then. What do
you want to bet the page changed in the last five hours?

------
TWAndrews
Does the math in the post seem plausible to anyone who uses affiliate links? A
.001 click-through rate to Amazon seems plausible, but unless I'm mistaken the
author of the post is using that a conversion percentage (i.e. a click-through
+ purchase), which seems way too high to me, by an order of magnitude or more.

Does anyone have solid numbers for click-through to purchase rates of
affiliate links?

~~~
jlgaddis
From my own numbers for Q4 2012 from my personal blog:

~6900 "impressions", 577 "product link clicks", 36 "other clicks" (NFI), 8
"total items ordered", 1.31% "total conversion" (as reported by Amazon).

$12.15 in earnings.

------
ommunist
Capitalism rewards skilful deception. Yes, she does unethically, but she is
rewarded by the system! And read her, she is doing a good job for her readers.
Ask yourself - are Google and Yahoo and Yandex doing all right by placing
everyone into their individual search bubbles to extract more ad money from
AdSense? Probably not.

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kriro
Looks like someone got some free A/B-testing on add-free vs banner-free out of
the exchange :P

------
dpweb
Competitor of hers maybe? Don't totally disagree but the implication at the
end this woman may be engaging in tax irregularities? - that's unfounded and a
bit slanderous.

Agree though - aff links are ads. You shouldn't say 'ad-free'.

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philip1209
Could a lack of disclosure about affiliate links be a violation of the Amazon
terms of service and get her affiliate account canceled?

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bjourne
Usually, when referring to someone in print, we use their last name. Out of
courtesy. So it's "Popova" not "Maria."

Also, _Bleymaier_ 's estimates on donation and affiliate income are just
ludicrous. 50k-100k/year in donations from 1.2 million visitors/month? Yeah,
right. :) They take away from the original point he was trying to make, which
he could have made without making numbers up out of thin air.

------
ibudiallo
Nothing wrong with trying to make money. It's not like she is scamming her
readers

~~~
canibanoglu
I don't think anyone is saying that trying to make money is wrong. It is very
disturbing (to me at least) to say that you're funded _only_ by donations
while you're embedding affiliate links. People should have the utmost respect
for their audience and the person in question has failed there.

~~~
Amadou
I think that this consistent misunderstanding that she is "only trying to make
money" is itself significantly more worrisome than her specific case.

I think it speaks very poorly of our profession that so many HN readers have a
really hard time grasping the concepts involved with this story. It makes me
question if this is simply an area of ethics that most tech-heads aren't very
experienced with or if it is something more insidious, more along the lines of
the Upton Sinclair quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand
something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

------
sogen
Affiliate links are ads, hers'

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humanspecies
The author of this article came across as a major creep to me. They guy checks
emails from 6 months ago and keeps going back to her blog to verify
stuff....WTF? I'd be more concerned about this guy than her silly affiliate
links.

------
thoughtcriminal
I'm not an accountant, but what The Brain Pickings is doing sounds like tax
fraud to me, especially the non-profit bit.

------
yourmind
scammer.

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simonhamp
Oh dear god. One more hypocrite makes illegitimate gains and has whistle blown
by jealous, over-zealous loser who believes themselves to be the moral
judge/jury/executioner of us all. Next

