[leviathant]

Call it a personal preference, but I'm not terribly impressed by asking for donations on a page loaded with Amazon affiliate links for fairly high-dollar items. I say this as someone who runs my own hobby site paid for entirely by affiliate links to Amazon and eBay.

An example of why I think it detracts from the article: You link to Monoprice.com for an XLR cable (good!) and then immediately link to a more expensive cable on Amazon. Why? Not because it's a better choice of cable, but because with any luck, someone will click through and you'll earn some cash. If you're going to link to a $13 mic cable for the opportunity to make money rather than just link to the $6 equivalent, what's to say half the links on the page are even genuinely good choices, or if you're linking to them because you'd potentially make an extra buck or two.

I'm not crapping on you loading up a blog post with affiliate links - I know that even before I signed up to eBay and Amazon affiliate programs, I often linked to them when telling people where to buy stuff, and now the affiliate programs simply paid me for doing what I always did. But doing that -and- asking for extra money if you found this post useful (presumably, finding it useful meant you bought equipment because of the post)? That changes the dynamic for me.

Addendum: I'd appreciate it if when you downvote me, you let me know what it is about my post that you didn't like or agree with.

[hivelogic]

Thanks for taking the time to read the post. Actually I didn't link to the Amazon cable because I wanted affiliate money, I linked to it as an alternative to Monoprice's slower and more expensive shipping costs. Many people don't want to wait more than a week and pay higher prices for a couple of cables.

[ugh]

It's his job, not his hobby.

I have a problem with affiliate links that are not marked as such, I certainly don't ever have a problem with asking for donations.

[hivelogic]

Good point, I've added a line explaining that I use affiliate links too. Thanks!