|
|
|
|
|
|
by clicks
4867 days ago
|
|
|
I think issue here is if you see an affiliate link, you start to question whether the author is heartily suggesting something because he genuinely likes it and wants to recommend it to you or he's just a bored blogger posting a new link on a new day, because that is what he does. On a side note, it seems to me that the author-reader trust is arguably preserved if the author of the articles does not choose what ads appear on his site because it absolves him of the cloud of doubt that he might have ulterior motives. 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.