You're right, I never rent from Ebert's page, but that's mainly because I don't read Ebert's page. If I did, and I saw a review of something that looked like I

You're right, I never rent from Ebert's page, but that's mainly because I don't read Ebert's page. If I did, and I saw a review of something that looked like I liked it, I'd be fairly likely to click a link to the Amazon rental page if it was visible in the right place, because it would save me a few clicks and searches. Of course, that's irrelevant, because he doesn't have links to the rentals on his page, he has links to the DVDs, and they're not even in view anymore once you've read to the bottom his review. So it's almost exactly as much effort to go through his affiliate link as it would be to search for the movie myself. If I had to guess, placement alone cuts his revenue from that source by at least a factor of 2 or 3, possibly even a factor of 10 or more. And Ebert's site is not a content site, it's a review site (a highly respected one, at that). Review sites usually do very well at driving sales compared to other types of sites. That's the main reason there are review sites for all sorts of products on the web. You most certainly do not go to Ebert's site just to read articles on their own merits, you go to find out which movies are worth watching. If he thinks a movie is worth watching, I'd imagine that makes a lot of people watch that movie fairly soon after reading his review, so if that's not converting into sales he's probably got some part of his affiliate strategy wrong in a very bad way.