Making $1 million from affiliate links on "Ad-Free" blog
on-advertising.tumblr.com
on-advertising.tumblr.com
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
Sound about right?
But what I see a bigger problem is that her asking for donation is presented to the reader as something which keeps the site ad-free, while it seems to be just another revenue stream.
Oddly, I don't like affiliate links in forums like HN.
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).
No, I think that's a sidetrack. The issue, at least how I read it, is saying to the dear reader "please donate as that's my only income source"* when it's not true. It's deliberately deceptive.
What's odd is that there's nothing wrong, that I can see, with just being upfront about affiliate links - "Hey, want to support this blog? I get a small amount of money from any purchases made by clicking on the amazon links"
* Yes, I realise that's not the words she's using, but it sure is the message that's conveyed
I believe that the reason that Amazon does this (I have an account) was intended to get around the sales tax issue by calling the payments for advertising as opposed to something that a State could take as "reseller" and translate to a presence and have a stronger leg for state sales tax from Amazon (not relevant given the recent changes but it was back when this practice started).
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...
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.
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".
She bemoans advertiser funded journalism yet makes money from advertisements. She's created an incentive for herself to perform a certain way, and yet writes about the dangers of just such an incentive.
It was kind of funny how most of the page is linked, it's almost hard not to click through to the page selling the book.
For me, linking or "making available" isn't advertising. An advertisement needs to contain content written by an advertiser. Is reviewing a book the same as advertising it?
If a reviewer is paid by the distributor of the books or products they review and they directly contribute to the sale of the book, they're marketing the book.
Because (much of) the income for the site came from affiliate links, her revenue was closely tied to what she wrote. And not simply in the "I have to write interesting/helpful things to maintain my readership", but in the "Posting a review of a good book will be financially more beneficial to me than posting a review of bad book".
Having those sort of external influences makes it harder to maintain your journalistic integrity. You (are tempted to) get distracted from "which story is best for my readers" to "which story will generate the most income".
Having those (undisclosed) external influences, while also being extremely vocal about how external financial motivations are bad for journalism, is hypocritical.
You can also employ a version of selling that is consumer focused rather than business focused; looking at the situation, I believe this is what she is doing.
Most of us may see affiliate links and ads as being one in the same, but I don't think they are, and reading into her views I think she has done a good job of explaining the difference.
The OP is upset because they believe Maria Popova is being influenced and is not being open and honest about how she is being influenced.
The problem is that while taking that additional form of income (which until last week was NOT disclosed on her page -- but in fairness was obvious to anyone with half a brain and any understanding about how this stuff works -- hint, just look for the affiliate code at the end of her Amazon links), Maria has consistently gone on record about the evils of advertising and sponsored content.
At the very least, it's hypocritical because affiliate links are in some sense, a form of advertising (at least when undisclosed). She says that she would never recommend or link to something she doesn't actually believe in -- and I believe her -- but without the disclosure (a disclosure the FTC actually requires), it raises questions of improprieties. By NOT being transparent as virtually every other person who does what she does is (look at John Gruber, Marco Arment, Merlin Mann, Jason Kottke and the many, many, many others who came before her who have always made it clear that they get a kickback from Amazon affiliate links), she at the very least loses the right to be as judgmental as she is about how other writers make money, as well as the state of advertising in general.
Then there is the unspoken issue, which was the fact that it was discovered back in November that she had maintained a number of spammy (pure, straight-up spam, no ifs ands or buts) affiliate link sites[1] until it was figured out and pointed out by another blogger. Then, magically, the sites disappeared and she made no public comment about it[2]. In light of that, it looks like a pattern.
And that pattern, honestly, wouldn't even be an issue for MOST people were it not for the whole attitude of "advertising is teh evil" that she has about other writers and other sites.
Then, of course, the other unspoken part is that there is a certain level of schadenfreude for people that are still annoyed over the whole Curator's Code bullshit that happened last year. And I'll be honest -- I made fun of her (and the Curator's Code) endlessly. It was a stupid, self-important, insipid and ill-thought out idea. Maria didn't invent the idea of a link blog and Maria doesn't get to dictate how and in what matter people hat-tip, link back or give a virtual hand-job to other "curators."
To be clear -- I'm not condemning her for any way she wants to make money -- I hope she makes $1 million a year off her site, if she does she deserves it -- but I do understand why for some people, it smells bad when someone who is vocally against traditional advertising and sponsored advertising is at the same time making significant money from affiliate links.
It isn't about "your band sold out because people like you" - it's more "you condemned other bands for signing to big labels while secretly taking big label money on the sly."
My personal feeling: This is unimportant drama that won't matter to the people that visit Brainpickings, like Maria and her work and click on her links. It also won't matter to the editors that commission her work for The Atlantic or the New York Times or whoever.
It matters to a small group of pedants who take Poynter's rules of "ethics" as gospel (don't make me laugh) and to a subset of the blogging community who enjoys needling people who they feel have unfairly condemned them in the past.
I guess it also appeals to people like myself who enjoy the melodrama and entertainment this episode provides, as it pulls us out of the daily ennui that is tech news the third week of February.
[1]: http://nostrich.tumblr.com/post/36619706595 [2]: http://nostrich.tumblr.com/post/36674349201
It's also important to note that if you blanket your site with affiliate links you ARE more likely to favorably review high % revenue items for example. Making your opinion possibly influenced by factors that your readers are not aware of.
These two factors are enough for me to consider her being pretty 'holier than though' in a lot of her statements.
> Affiliate links aren't "ads" in any definition a reader would
> have unless it is somehow immoral to make a living.
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.
Steroids are never prescribed by medical experts, ADHD medication is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortisone#Effects_and_uses
Having said that, there are different types of steroids and not all of them are prescribed by (honest) medical experts.
You say her story is sad. I'd say your view on life, thinking anyone who neglects to adhere to your strict standards of supplementing income is doing so out of bad faith and a loss of integrity, is the real sad story.
I've known a lot of people in my life, I have watched a number of careers start, peak, and end. After a while you recognize them when you see them. Did you read any of the Jason Leher coverage? Did you follow the follies of Shirley Hornstein?
The common thread is that someone lowers the integrity cut-off bar on their own behavior for what seem to be perfectly justifiable reasons, and it works out better than they anticipated. That knowledge eats that them until they do it again, and again, and again.
I observed Maria Popova's story, from the perspective of ever decreasing levels of integrity, reads just like that. I don't know how her story will end up of course, sometimes people pull out of it and get themselves back into the right as it were.
I'm curious why you consider that observation sensationalist. Is it because I asserted it is widely applicable across a variety of people and situations, or something else? Is it sensationalist to say that a dropped apple falls because of gravity and that same principle keeps the moon in orbit?
Seriously? Comparing the author of a blog who solicits donations as well as uses affiliate links to someone who falsified their employment history and photoshopped their head into pictures with celebrities? And then you extrapolate those few datapoints you have to represent everyone who has ever "lowered" (by your standards, of course) their integrity?
> I'm curious why you consider that observation sensationalist.
Comparing a blog author using affiliate links to a truck driver abusing drugs or an athlete using steroids is pretty sensationalist. Those examples bring a bunch of extra baggage: a truck driver abusing cocaine is driving impaired and doing something incredibly illegal.
"The problem with your prediction is that you assume what she is doing is lowering her integrity, and the criteria you are using to determine this is entirely your own."
I'm going to assume you actually read the article. In that article Ms. Propova espouses to The Guardian the need for journalistic independence, she labels her site 'advertising free" and she uses ads in the form of referral links to support her web site.
When presented with the difference between what she was saying and what she was doing, she dissembles and rationalizes affiliate links as not being advertising. She knows that isn't true, she ran affiliate link farms before she ran this blog [1].
So she is lying. I gave her the benefit of the doubt that she wasn't intentionally being a swindler (she may be but this article doesn't provide enough evidence to support that) and by that reasoning I interpreted her actions which were at a lower standard of integrity than her words to The Guardian as 'lowering her integrity.'
You under sell the reality with this comment:
"Comparing the author of a blog who solicits donations as well as uses affiliate links to someone who falsified their employment history and photoshopped their head into pictures with celebrities?"
The integrity issue isn't with here using affiliate links and soliciting donations here, the integrity issue is attempting to create a perception through lying to benefit herself financially. Had she written on her blog, "This blog is funded by donations and from what ever I make from the affiliate links" or had she written "Note that when you buy an item from amazon by clicking the links here it helps to support my blog, I am also supported by generous donations from people like you." Or something similar, that would be clear. But it would also result in fewer donations which would cut into her income stream. She seems to have demonstrated that with the whole banner-free / non-ads switcheroo and back again. The integrity issue is that she is lying to get more money.
And what did Shirly Hornstein do? She lied about who she knew or who she could make introductions to. Why? Because people who believed that lie did things for her, and helped support her in a lifestyle she believed she deserved. Back before Shirly was photoshopping herself into candid snapshots she was just telling a few white lies to get past the barriers. If you compared her actions then, with Ms. Popova you would be hard pressed to see any difference in the 'level' of integrity loss.
And that was my point, it starts small, it gets out of hand, and it ruins people. Did you watch the interview Lance Armstrong did with Barbara Walters? Did you see why he cheated? How he rationalized his need to "get healthy" and how "others were doing it."
Did you not hear the same plot points in his story? Did you not see his own self belief that it all started out so innocently? Did you listen to any of the testimony on the steroids scandal before Congress? Story after story after story, "It was a small thing" followed by "just one more time" followed by "I had to keep up" followed by "it ruined my life."
Then there was this point:
"Comparing a blog author using affiliate links to a truck driver abusing drugs or an athlete using steroids is pretty sensationalist."
I'm not sure we'll agree here but that is ok, I see the same story in all of them, whether or not you read about it or hear about it depends on your relationship to the people in the story and their relative visibility, but that doesn't make it a different story. Lots of people cheat on their spouses because they are enthralled by an engaging and attractive person, happens all the time, and it happened to General Petraeous. The latter was a "big scandal" because he was the Directory of the CIA, but the story? He let his dick call the shots. That isn't sensationalism, its just sad.
"a truck driver abusing cocaine is driving impaired and doing something incredibly illegal."
I take if you've never used cocaine, it doesn't impair you like alcohol or marijuana might. When I was going to school it was a problem on a par with illicit ADHD drugs today and for much the same reason. I knew several people who used it regularly to keep their energy level up and their concentration sharp, unless you knew they were using you would just think they were smart and quick witted with boundless energy. These days [2] Truck drivers would probably stick with Red Bull or over the counter drugs to avoid tripping up on a drug test.
[1] http://nostrich.tumblr.com/post/36619706595
[2] "In the 1980s the administration of President Ronald Reagan proposed to put an end to drug abuse in the trucking industry by means of the then-recently developed technique of urinalysis, with his signing of Executive Order 12564, requiring regular random drug testing of all truck drivers nationwide, as well as employees of other DOT-regulated industries specified in the order, though considerations had to be made concerning the effects of an excessively rapid implementation of the measure." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_driver#Truck_driver_probl...
So you write a comment on HN about a blog you read about another blog? Get a life.
The issue isn't she makes n amount of money. The issue is what she is saying to her readers isn't actually true.
I would disagree. The presence of the affiliate links within the articles effectively converts each article into an "advertisement". What is being advertised are the embedded affiliate links.
In this way there is created a self-reinforcing feedback loop that likely has a choice effect on what postings are written (advertisements) because there is an incentive to only write postings that will have the largest affiliate click through.
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... )
I put a single affiliate link on my technical book reviews (sample: http://swanson.github.com/writeup/2012/10/29/complications.h...).
The numbers: https://gist.github.com/swanson/4711006
Not exactly rolling in cash yet :)
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.
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.
(I can recall a few death-of-blog posts where the author didn't say as much, but the content of the post made it clear enough that they had decided they better make some money if they are going to continue writing the blog and apparently the link loaded final post failed to make money)
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.
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.
But if, after due diligence, you decide to purchase the item, you'll pay the same amount either way. The only question is whether you want some of the purchase amount to be shared with the blogger or whether you want to make sure that Amazon won't have to share any of it.
Simple economics come into play, however, and the less Amazon has to pay to bloggers and other feeds, the more they can cut their prices.
Oh I know it is. The blog in question is essentially one giant Amazon ad pitch (I have never seen that many affiliate links on one page). However if the argument is "well the person just wanted to review the book anyways, and why not them get the money instead of it padding Bezo's pockets", the position falls apart: If they aren't being incentivized by the affiliate links, then Amazon might as well save that money.
But of course we all know that such blogs are heavily incentivized by such affiliate commissions. When Atwood decides to pitch a particular product that what do you know he can cover with an affiliate link...it isn't accidental.
They'll charge as much as you'll pay regardless of what they are paying to bloggers.
FYI. The Amazon affiliate program does not allow you to purchase items via your own referrals. To do so is a contract violation and they will terminate your affiliate account.
1. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/02/13/blogonomics...
2. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/02/16/maria-popov...
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.
This Party Took a Turn for the Douche (by Garfunkel and Oates) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHH3brmhPyw
edit: Trying to explain how odd it was to find that in the article
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.
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.
I do agree that amount of traffic is not a giveaway.
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.
Web site owners soliciting donations while making money from affiliate links, not unusual. Owners making money from affiliate links while not disclosing them, even more common. Journalists attacking bias while making money and not disclosing it, unusual and certainly worth investigating.
What you are referring to is the rev share %: how much of the the sale price amazon shares with the publisher. 10-15% is correct here.
This of course takes into account high ticket items purchased with active cookie etc.
I simply think that 10% conversion is just way to high. If it was so easy to make a $1 ARPU from a blog, you'd see way more way more bloggers :)
24 hours[0], if I'm reading correctly.
> If it was so easy to make a $1 ARPU from a blog, you'd see way more way more bloggers :)
If I made $1 ARPU, I'd quit my job and blog full-time.
0: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/oper...
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...
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/oper...
> You must, however, clearly state the following on your site: “[Insert your name]
> is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate
> advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising
> fees by advertising and linking to [insert the applicable site name (
> amazon.com, amazonsupply.com, or myhabit.com)].”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. That helps support Brain Pickings by offsetting a fraction
of what it takes to maintain the site[...]
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.
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.
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.
I would change the wording on the tip jar, but if her blog really is generating a lot of book sales it's not unreasonable for her to see some revenue.
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!"
Also, it's just not nice to publish personal email communication. Just bring it up with her over a coffee or something.
At the risk of getting downvoted for a silly comment, there's the Feynman Flowchart: http://onionesquereality.wordpress.com/2008/01/20/what-would...
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
I think it is a big stretch to assume that anyone who clicks an illustration from a book in a review wants to purchase the book. By making so much of the screen space clickable like that she makes it quite easy for an accidental click to end up "capturing" the affiliate revenue from any amazon purchases that user makes in the next 10 hours (or whatever the amazon affiliate cookie time-out is).
Yes. That's called advertising. Something every page of her site denies it has.
Those images fulfill a purpose to the reader: They deepen the review.
How does this work exactly? Is there a cookie with the affiliate's id set when you click on an affiliate's link?
What happened was, I linked to a book on programming that was relevant, and being broke at the time, put it as an affiliate link.
Someone looked at the book, and went on to buy $2300 or so of camera gear. I got the 4% commission on the whole bundle. You get to see exactly what people purchased (though not, of course, individually, but "X of Y")
It's very interesting, if you've never worked with Amazon Affiliates, it's extremely rich data they provide.
"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.
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?
Does anyone have solid numbers for click-through to purchase rates of affiliate links?
~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.
Agree though - aff links are ads. You shouldn't say 'ad-free'.
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.
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!"