14 ms·
Affiliate links on Reddit
- stesch 10y agoVoat, Imzy, and Hacker News are pretty obsessed with Reddit.
- simonswords82 10y agoWell Reddit is one of the most popular websites in the world, so it makes sense no?
- B1FF_PSUVM 10y agoDigg we go.
- LeoNatan25 10y agoHopefully sooner rather than later.
- stesch 10y agoAnd then?
- razzmataz 10y agoWhy not try to resurrect k5?
- verroq 10y agoFirst imgur, then reddit. I hope voat is readying their servers for the traffic spike.
- Pxtl 10y agoHah. Everytime Reddit ownership does anything, the response is "voat". Some people like profitability and moderating away racists and paedophiles.
- mynewtb 10y agoOne look at voat.co's frontpage was enough for me to simply add the domain to my blocker. Nothing but filth, looked like only the bad bits of reddit.
- M2Ys4U 10y agoThe only time I've seen people say they're moving to Voat is when they get fed up of being banned for being idiot racists (e.g. nazis, white supremacists etc.) or misogynists.
- krapp 10y agoThat is why sites like Voat and 8chan were created - people believed Reddit and 4chan were too strict and politically correct.
- hsod 10y agoAnd then on the flip side you have Imzy, for people who believe Reddit is insufficiently strict and politically correct. Options are a good thing, I think.
- stesch 10y agoImzy is slow and boring. Looks like a second system effect version of Reddit + Digg.
- kelukelugames 10y agoI'm on Imzy. I don't hate it but also don't like it. However, I love the art themes.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mynewtb 10y agoOne look at voat.co's frontpage was enough for me to simply add the domain to my blocker. Nothing but filth, looked like only the bad bits of reddit.
- stesch 10y agoMy BMI is too high for Voat. :-(
- shrugger 10y agoI know it's one of those 'tabs or spaces' questions, but are there any decent alternatives to Reddit? I've tried Voat, but it's literally just Reddit. The world needs a p2p, anonymity-first, censorship resistant link-sharing and discussion site/app/thing. If anyone could point in some such direction, I sure would appreciate it.
- drhodes 10y agocheck out bitmessage https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page
- unlinker 10y agoA p2p discussion site would even be slower than reddit itself, and that's a lot to say.
- shrugger 10y agoI've never been hindered by Reddit's speed myself. Is this a real issue in other places?
- unlinker 10y agoIf you are logged in (i.e. pages are not cached) and you load a page with lots of comments (or any page, at a peak hour), generation times of over three seconds are not unheard of.
- DanBC 10y ago>The world needs a p2p, anonymity-first, censorship resistant link-sharing and discussion site/app/thing Every single time that's been tried it tanked because either pathological arseholes overwhelmed everyone else, or no-one wanted to use it. But since you ask for an example that you can use: The "free" hierarchy of Usenet. It was set up to have no rules.
- visakanv 10y ago
- asd 10y agoThey will not be overwriting any existing affiliate codes. If this helps them keep the lights on, I say go for it. https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/4ldk0r/reddit_change_affiliate_links_on_reddit/d3mfo70 https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/4ldk0r/reddit_ch...
- yclept 10y agoOf concern is that they are using a third party affiliate network. That means tracking and selling you.
- adamrezich 10y agoWell, I mean, I don't pay to use Reddit, and there's no such thing as a free lunch... so if this helps keep Reddit afloat, I guess it doesn't really bother me that much?
- verroq 10y agoPerhaps this should be default opt-out for reddit gold users?
- ben_jones 10y agoThe problem I have with it is I've seen third party affiliates do incredibly shady stuff. Companies like Amazon, Google, Reddit, do shady stuff too, but they at least have some interest in keeping a good public image. Third-party companies however live in the shadow and could give two fucks how far they push user privacy protections, if they even give them any credence in the first place.
- herbst 10y agoIt is kind of strange that online shops are in with this. I mean the links are there anyway, there is no additional benefit for the shops but they still have to pay additional costs in that way.
- Nokinside 10y agoIt's only odd if the traffic to affiliated sites is not mysteriously increasing.
- rwmj 10y agoI wonder what's in it for Amazon to continue with affiliate links. It was clever in the early days when Amazon wanted everyone to link/visit Amazon and were willing to give out free money to achieve that. But now it's Amazon paying to maintain a network of spammers, click hijackers and dishonest reviewers. What's in it for Amazon now?
- yclept 10y agoI think those same things are still incentivizing the program.
- MicroBerto 10y agoI think about this frequently, but they recently revamped their associates screens after years of not touching them at all. So I'd say there is a bit more roadmap. My best answer is that right now, they realize it's best not to ruin a great thing. They're on top of the world, things are going well, why rock the boat?
- tomascot 10y agoI guess it could be free promotion, is not unusual for respected sites to publish affiliate links to Amazon. MercadoLibre, one of the biggest ecommerce platform in latam, had an affiliate program, but they cut it when they were "big enough".
- Tiquor 10y agoVigilink sits between them, the shop doesn't have to be explicitly in on it.
- mrmondo 10y agoIs there an opt-in/out button clearly visible in the early section of your profile / settings? If not reddit would be considered clickbait and this would cause a huge drop in user and social attendance and lost revenue. This move is more than foolish.
- robbiemitchell 10y agoWhy would the addition of affiliate tags cause any drop in user engagement?
- mrmondo 10y agoDigital privacy is bigger in the news right now, it's on every countries agenda and to put the icing on the cake an example like affiliate tags is something that's trivial explain to non-technical people. When a social media (always in the media) site that's well known starts tracking user links and proving that to any third parties - the argument from reddit will be that it's A) Anonymous and B) Secure - both of which are hot topics which are quickly starting starting to be disassembled by the general public - undoubtedly reddit will either be wrapped up in it which could be financially costly or publicisd and will likely turn off users. Seems like a very odd time to be making a move like this.
- sunshiney 10y agoDo you have a suggestion on how they can earn revenue from their service in a way that does not cause you to object?
- ksou32 10y agoRip internet
- sunshiney 10y agoNow why do you say that? What is an alternative means to earning dollars that you do support? I am an online entrepreneur so I am truly interested in knowing. .. ty!
- greenspot 10y agoEvery consumer site wants user generated content for free but is not willing to share a tiny bit of the revs. This signals desperation than proper business development. Reddit should look at Snapchat: today they have a Nike filter live. This is smart monetization and gives more bucks than this affiliate hack. Besides, Reddit should have done this affiliate thing themselves and not employed Viglink. Any intermediate will not just take their cut, they take more and send lower reports in general (if a CPA deal).
- stdclass 10y ago> This is smart monetization and gives more bucks than this affiliate hack. Do you have any numbers on that matter?
- greenspot 10y agoJust a feeling. It's really very hard to get major brands like Nike as advertisers on board. Why: they want a perfect environment. A positive one and a premium brand which fits to them and a great audience. And not to forget a HUGE reach. Once you have all of these PLUS contacts to the right media agencies then you get good deals based on CPM. The less you as a publisher can offer the more you end with CPC or even crappy CPA deals where you never know if the intermediate evades your commissions. Just look around, usually advertisers pair themselves with publishers with a similar brand awareness and quality. Eg Nike or BMW won't advertise on Reddit or Facebbok because there would be a too strong asymmetry between advertisers' and publishers' brands. Nike and BMW would rather place and position themselves to eg the next James Bond movie from Sony (=> similar brand perception). Reddit is the typical publisher that is avoided by a lot of major advertisers. The brand and the audience is maybe too heterogenous and inconsistent. While a sub like Photshopbattles might be positive and funny many other subs like Gonewild (which is huge btw) give Reddit a mixed perception. However, doing a deal with Viglink shows that they must have tried everything before (to get deals with major brands) but finally resigned and go now the affiliate path. There is one good thing about affiliate marketing though: ad blockers do not harm your business.
- 10y ago
- arielm 10y agoI think this is a great attempt by Reddit to become sustainable that isn't purely based on display advertising. I personally dislike affiliate links just like most others but unlike ads they don't ruin my browsing experience and are generally very transparent. The real issue here in my opinion is how this was announced, as a "we're doing this, FYI". I'd instead open up a discussion with mods of large communities to get feedback and once they understand the goal get them to show support. And if they had gone the route of involving large communities they could have also done a tiny rev share, similar to how YouTube compensates content creators.
- sunshiney 10y agoAs an online entrepreneur I am curious as to why you dislike affiliates?
- Spivak 10y agoBecause it changes the motivation for recommending recommending a product when you're getting paid for it. The perverse incentive structure is why most of Reddit bans them. In Reddit's case, it means they have an incentive to silently promote posts and comments that have affiliate links because it makes them money. If a review of a product has affiliate links then I'll immediately distrust the review because it's not possible for me to know whether they actually like the product or because they get paid if they convince people to like it.
- sunshiney 10y agoI have so many reactions to these thoughts that I hardly know where to start! My first reaction is that this means all sales functions are to not be trusted. Is that accurate for you?
- arielm 10y agoPrimarily because when they are done at the post level, meaning, when those that post add them there's a misalignment of incentive in many cases. In this case however, since the posters aren't putting them in there's no incentive.
- TelAviv_1 10y agoNearly everyone who matters has left reddit for voat once they started disallowing posts on health and fitness. (They didn't want to "offend" people who like to promote gluttony.)
- orng 10y agoReddit HQ, in a not too distant future: HighUpManager: "We aren't hitting our expected KPI's, we need to find ways to increase affiliate revenue. Is there any way we can increase affiliate-link exposure?" MiddleManager: "Well, I guess I could have my team modify the ranking algorithm so that our affiliate links rise to the front-page faster and stay there longer. However..." HighUpManager: "Great! Make it so."
- deegles 10y agoIs that what happened to Digg?
- whamlastxmas 10y agoIf I remember right, Digg was a combination of changing the UI drastically in a way that most everyone hated, combined with "power users" having disproportionate ability in getting posts visible.
- Touche 10y ago> If I remember right, Digg was a combination of changing the UI drastically in a way that most everyone hated Although this is common belief, Digg was on the decline well before v4 was released. v4 was a response to the decline, not the cause of it. They mistakenly attributed the site's decline to the rise of social media apps like Twitter, and v4's was their attempt to become the "Twitter for news". It's true that Digg didn't do enough to foster a healthy community; threads were often toxic, and yes the top users had too much sway. What's forgotten is some of the dumb things they did to try and monetize, like that full-site ads (background image ads) that I'm pretty sure everyone hates.
- Grue3 10y agoEven though Digg was on decline, it was still bigger than reddit. It could've still been a significant site today, or at least something like Slashdot. The day v4 was released, it singlehandedly killed Digg. It was a bloodbath never seen before, or since.
- kmfrk 10y agoI can totally understand this intent, but back when I was looking into something similar for forums, I found that doing so was generally against the TOS of places like Amazon?
- gravypod 10y agoMy main issue with this is that this is some behavior that is typically present in malware. Why is it acceptable when a website you visit does this, but unacceptable when an application you download an use does this? This seems very underhanded. I really don't think I'll support this. I think I may need to write a Chrome/Firefox extension that grabs all of those links and rewrites them to be affiliate links to a charity.
- userbinator 10y agoFrom reading through that thread it seems this is being done with JS, so the links still look like before but when you click them, something else happens to cause a redirect. IMHO that's not very honest behaviour, but fortunately sounds easy to block. However, I have a feeling that some of the users will simply start rewriting links to not look like links. http://superuser.com/questions/513323/how-to-open-hxxp-or-other-obscured-links-automatically-in-firefox http://superuser.com/questions/513323/how-to-open-hxxp-or-ot...
- DanBC 10y agoAre they allowed to do that under US law? Don't affiliate links have to be marked as such? EDIT: Here's what the FTC says: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking#affiliate https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftc... > I’m an affiliate marketer with links to an online retailer on my website. When people read what I’ve written about a particular product and then click on those links and buy something from the retailer, I earn a commission from the retailer. What do I have to disclose? Where should the disclosure be? > If you disclose your relationship to the retailer clearly and conspicuously on your site, readers can decide how much weight to give your endorsement. > In some instances – like when the affiliate link is embedded in your product review – a single disclosure may be adequate. When the review has a clear and conspicuous disclosure of your relationship and the reader can see both the review containing that disclosure and the link at the same time, readers have the information they need. You could say something like, “I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.” But if the product review containing the disclosure and the link are separated, readers may lose the connection. > As for where to place a disclosure, the guiding principle is that it has to be clear and conspicuous. The closer it is to your recommendation, the better. Putting disclosures in obscure places – for example, buried on an ABOUT US or GENERAL INFO page, behind a poorly labeled hyperlink or in a “terms of service” agreement – isn’t good enough. Neither is placing it below your review or below the link to the online retailer so readers would have to keep scrolling after they finish reading. Consumers should be able to notice the disclosure easily. They shouldn’t have to hunt for it. > Is “affiliate link” by itself an adequate disclosure? What about a “buy now” button? > Consumers might not understand that “affiliate link” means that the person placing the link is getting paid for purchases through the link. Similarly, a “buy now” button would not be adequate.
- unlinker 10y agoWhy was the title changed in this way? The new title is so generic, it has nothing to do with the actual problem.
- sbierwagen 10y agoWhy on Earth would they go through Viglink, rather than modifying the URLs themselves? Is it that hard to add `&tag=reddit` to the end of an amazon.com url?
- andyh2 10y agoVigLink's value to Reddit is likely in the ability to tag a very long tail of non-Amazon merchants.
- imaginenore 10y agoRewriting links for dozens, or even hundreds, of networks is trivial, it's just just a bunch of regexes. Creating dozens of affiliate accounts and managing them is the actual annoying part.
- kelukelugames 10y agoMy guesses are: 1) Maybe Viglink offered a deal to get exposure. I never heard of them until today. 2) They claim to cover 30k merchants.[1] Maybe there is a lot of money for reddit in the 29,999 other sellers too. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VigLink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VigLink
- xur17 10y agoVigilink also offers a great short term solution to help them get this out the door, and figure out how much they can make. In the future, they can do the math, and pretty easily decide if it's worth taking the time to rewrite the urls / manage a bunch of affiliate programs themselves to increase their margin.
- ecesena 10y agoIt's a maintenance nightmare. And using services like viglink your code only deals with a single provider, like you say, you add a single tag and it works with plenty of metchants. Potentially this also opens for other use cases such as substituting the product name with a link to buy, maybe useful in some specific subreddits.
- petetnt 10y agoOne can also opt out of VigLink via http://www.viglink.com/opt-out/ http://www.viglink.com/opt-out/ so that's an option too if you don't appreciate this change.