
Ask HN: Do you trust review sites/blog posts with affiliate links? Could you? - mthoms
Do you generally (trust|distrust|avoid) online reviews if they contain affiliate links to the products being reviewed?<p>Let&#x27;s imagine a site dedicated to reviewing all the offerings in a specific niche. We&#x27;ll assume the site has no ads, a pleasing no-nonsense design and is entirely transparent about its monetization strategy. Is it even possible for site like this to exist and still be considered trustworthy in your eyes?<p><i>When I visit sites that monetize in this manner, the conflict I see is that some products have lucrative affiliate programs while others have none. Obviously, this creates an incentive for the site to favour certain products over others.</i>
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oblib
I don't trust most of them and this is because when I've contacted some of
those that are top ranked by Google they tell me how much I have to pay to get
a top ranking on their site.

And they're not shy or even evasive about it. They are very matter of fact
about it.

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mthoms
I'm curious, is this in the context of asking them to perform an actual
_written review_ of your product or were you just inquiring about sponsored
links/ads/mentions/etc?

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oblib
This was about asking them to review the product. I was left smh after
contacting a few of them.

I spent a bit of time ranking sites for Google. The training and process
provided didn't allow much time to rank a site, so I get why those sites might
have a high ranking.

After I'd talked to a few sales reps for those sites I went back and spent a
bit more time with them and as I recall they all stated that the "rankings"
were advertisements. It wasn't really "buried", but wasn't highlighted either.

FWIW, it was a invoicing app I was looking to have reviewed.

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enonevets
I don’t trust dedicated review sites or comparison sites because they’re built
pretty much as a monetization vehicle. In the same vein I dislike products,
services, or sites that do something similar but in reality is just a big
amazon referral source in disguise.

Outside of this, I generally don’t have a problem with people using affiliate
links as a way to monetize something they’d talk about anyway.

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captn3m0
I trust those that have a clear ethics policy, such as WiredCutter which is
run by NYC and maintains a firewall between the reviewers and their
sales/affiliate teams.

