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?

Let's imagine a site dedicated to reviewing all the offerings in a specific niche. We'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?

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.

[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.

[mthoms → oblib]

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?

[oblib → mthoms]

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.

[blitz]

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.

[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.