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by dailyrorschach 2427 days ago
This seems to suggest they won't recommend a product if they can't make an affiliate deal off of it, which is not the case. Yes, they make money through these links, but I've not seen a case of them not referring to a good product because it is not available on a store they have an affiliate deal with. And if the product is their chosen product and no affiliate deal is there, they link to the brand store or other retailer.
2 comments
dublinben 2427 days ago
There's at least one notable example of them pulling a recommendation when a manufacturer wouldn't provide an affiliate program:

https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729408

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dragontamer 2427 days ago
> This seems to suggest they won't recommend a product if they can't make an affiliate deal off of it, which is not the case.

It goes beyond and deeper than that.

Affiliate-based ad-model is beholden to Amazon for revenue. If Amazon launches their own review site (ex: leveraging the Washington Post brand, as a hypothetical), then you can almost be assured that Wirecutter would be killed off. All Amazon has to do is stop paying paid affiliate-links and instead offer review services through Washington Post (and ONLY Washington Post).

We're beyond the point of simply having websites "function". We're at the stage of the internet where we need to consider how to build web-businesses / web-organizations that last for longer than 10 years, even in the face of unknown changes. Too many websites make short-term assumptions (such as "We can trust Amazon to keep giving us money perpetually"), and end up getting swallowed or shut-down as soon as those assumptions fail.

True: Amazon Affiliate links still are a decent source of money. But just two years ago, most people probably thought that Google Adsense money was good enough to be sustainable also. The collapse of the banner-ad money (as money has shifted to Youtube ads instead) has especially hit online sites (especially those without a Youtube presence) extremely hard.

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