I'm not sure I see what's wrong with this. The author obviously invested work in this and provided a resource others may find useful. You're free not to buy books through their affiliate links.
When you say something like "nice affiliate hack" it comes with an implication that it's wrong, because a lot of people on the Internet try to trick others into clicking their affiliate links.
The English language does not change because this is HN and everything thinks their IQ is 3 standard deviations above the mean.
"Nice _______ hack" has an obvious and blatant negative connotation, particularly when it's on its own like that. The implication is that this is just a way to make a few bucks. That's not what the commenter meant, thankfully, but that's only known after further explanation.
What about this is useful? There is no breakdown of whether the mentions were upvoted or downvoted, no mention of whether they solved the problem (or were even relevant to the question), no review of the books so that readers can make an informed decision, etc. This list is not much different than making a list of the top selling programming books on amazon.
I like lists like this for discovering books I haven't heard of. I don't make an immediate buy decision based on appearance in a list, and will do more research. But it's a nice way to run into something you didn't run into before for some reason.
To each their own; shaming the OP on HN for adding affiliate links on their own website, on the product of their own effort, is what I'm trying to point out.
>You're free not to buy books through their affiliate links.
You're only free to do this if you know that it's an issue. Unless you know about the affiliate program, you may be supporting this person against your own will. Even if you do know about the affiliate program, you may not know that after you click an affiliate link, the owner of the code gets a chunk of ANY Amazon purchase you make in the next 24 hours, whether or not it is related to the original link.
I find this mindset baffling. I mean that earnestly. Can you try to explain why other people making money bothers you?
It seems pretty clear that amazon thinks affiliates provide a useful service. And if you go to amazon because someone shared something that interested you enough to buy it, they've provided you with a service. What exactly is the problem?
Because it is a undisclosed conflict of interest.Imagine you go with a friend to a bookstore , and he recommends to you several books. Since you seem to trust your friend and you have the money, you buy the books. Unbenknownst to you, your friend receives a 5% commission, and he never disclosed it to you. Same principle. It is a whole different game if he mentions this to you in advance, since now you consider your friend a as an interested part and you will consider his recommendations more carefully.
So? He can overhype all the books without giving preference to one. He can pontificate about how important is to read books, how all the geniuses at HN read these very important books and so on.He only needs to maximize the money spent on the books, not the selling of a particular one.
He is advertising beers (and get money from all of them) not just Budweiser.
As to be honest, I have no clue about SEO at all :) I'm happy some other developers checked it out...Didn't even think to support this project, data is quite static. But according to some feedback, some things to be changed for better filtering. Will get on it at night :) Not really interested in sales, will be happy if amazon would send me a pack of beer :)
Out of my memory, Amazon affiliate links only earned me something like $30, total (I had other sources of revenue via targeted ads, which earned a bit more, but not much).