How I made $500 in one hour on Hacker News | Hacker News Reader

How I made $500 in one hour on Hacker News

emadibrahim.com

4 pointseibrahim12 comments

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Jesus. Every goddamn link in that blog post is an affiliate link. Someone ban this fucking guy.

Not that it's that bad to use them, but the way this dude is doing it makes me feel cheated.

very constructive. thanks.

how is that different than almost all bloggers posting affiliate links to amazon proudcts/books.

how do you feel cheated?

So it's ok to use them but the way I am using them makes you feel cheated? How so?

What a douchey thing to do. If you were really interested in helping the HN community you'd just put in the direct link instead of this affiliate shit. I felt dirty just reading your post.

I would not recommend admitting to using a referral scheme on Hacker News. That's not "hacking" or "creative marketing," that's just spam.

This was actually an awesome design framework that I wanted to SHARE with HN. And the fact that these many sales and comments came off it is an indication that is something that HN readers wanted. There is nothing wrong with using an affiliate link :)

If all I am doing is posting affiliate links then yes that would be spam.

So you follow up with a post on how you made $500 from posting on HN? Classy.

Oh, and using affiliate links without disclosure is, indeed, wrong. Just ask the FTC.

Why all the hate for affiliate links!!! A lot of people on HN are trying to create startups and side projects and many of them consider affiliate marketing for their projects. So it's ok to add it to our marketing plans but posting about it is bad? Like I said, if this was not a relative product/service for HN readers, I would have never posted it.

PS: I do disclose that they are affiliate links in my post. Plus pretty much anyone on HN knows how an affiliate link look like by just looking at the URL.

Is it really that bad to use affiliate links? Don't many of us on HN use affiliate marketing to promote our products/services?

Affiliate links are always bad.

why?

Because you claim to be benefiting others without transparently disclosing that you're strongly benefiting yourself monetarily.

Fewer startups use referral links nowadays because it encourages spam.

So is disclosure the only problem? Because I believe that I do disclose that they are affiliate links.

PS: I appreciate your feedback and thanks for keeping the discussion civil.

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