4 ms·

There is little incentive for anyone to curate a list of 'best bikes under $500' for any reason other than this though? However. the fact that you found so man

by dazc 5y ago

There is little incentive for anyone to curate a list of 'best bikes under $500' for any reason other than this though? However. the fact that you found so many amazon affiliates says more about the integrity of other bike retailers. Why would there not be an even spread of affiliate links to merchants other than amazon do you wonder? Certainty of payment, that's why.

Traster 5y ago
I don't think there is little incentive for anyone to curate a list of best bikes for under $500. There are plenty of incentives for journalism publications like MCN (motorcycle news) to do reviews of the products in the sectors they cover. There are plenty of publications about Cycling, it's a very popular sport. The problem is that the monetization of the affiliate system creates a massive incentive for people to crowd out the real people who do this. Instead of googling which bike to buy and being met with a number of fairly reputable publications which specialize in this stuff, you're met with Business Insider and other trash which are all just following the incentive of trying to get their affiliate link clicked between the time you start researching and the time you innevitably buy something off Amazon. I think the MCN example above is actually really good - since no one expects to get an affiliate payment from Amazon from someone buying a motorcycle, the quality of the reviews for "Best motorbike under $5000" are about a million times better than "Best bike for under $500". The good reviews do exist, you just can't find them, because Amazon has completely screwed the click through path from "Google X product -> Purchase on Amazon"
- jpalomaki 5y ago
  If people are not willing to pay for content and block ads, affiliate and content marketing schemes might be the future of these sites as well.
  - zo1 5y ago
    I think we may have stumbled upon an unfortunate circumstance of how our brains work, and it's being actively exploited (like say how we agree that marketing cigarettes to kids is bad kind of thing?). We could reasonably say that we are willing to pay for content, we're just not attuned to seeing how "free" content is actually detrimental to us and is being monetized behind the scenes. At the same time, Google/Amazon latched on to it and are taking advantage of it for their own gains. Either way, we're stuck in a downward feedback loop that's only going to make this worse until one of the big players falls over.
- dazc 5y ago
  The likes of motorcycle and car magazines/review sites are also incentivised by money, it may not be quite so obvious how though? Let's say I want to do an honest review of bikes under $500, where am I going to get the bikes from in order to do this? Shall I go out and buy them?
  - Traster 5y ago
    This is covered by standard journalists all the time - Linus (from LTT) talks about this all the time. Of course manufacturers give samples to test, but that's table stakes, there is absolutely not an expectation of specific positive coverage.
prepend 5y ago
> There is little incentive for anyone to curate a list of 'best bikes under $500' for any reason other than this though? “Back in the olden days” people would write pages because they loved the subject area and wanted to share knowledge/show off/start conversations. So it was very common for people who were just really into bikes to spend some time sharing their thoughts on what the top 10 bikes under $500 were because they wanted to help people buy good bikes. There was no monetization, or at least direct monetization. Those sites may still be around, but monetization has driven low-quality content higher up in SEO so the bike lover (who probably doesn’t care about SEO) doesn’t get content seen.
- ackbar03 5y ago
  >There was no monetization, or at least direct monetization Maybe they can try affiliate links! I think that was how the "crappy" sites used to do it in the old days. I never really understood the whole seo game and if anyone actually made money or just pretended to make money so they can sell courses
  - prepend 5y ago
    I think some people like sharing knowledge. I keep a blog where I just write things that are interesting to me and maybe to others. I used to have affiliate links because I was playing around with stuff, but don’t think any have worked in 10+ years. I have no monetization plan or ever figure I’ll make money off the site. But it costs me nothing to run, so that’s ok. There are many sites like this, but they are much harder to find because Google isn’t able to differentiate meaningful content from the facade of meaningful content (ie, SEO). It’s like the degradation in academic papers where groups will reference each other like crazy to game rankings.

by dazc 5y ago

Traster 5y ago

I don't think there is little incentive for anyone to curate a list of best bikes for under $500. There are plenty of incentives for journalism publications like MCN (motorcycle news) to do reviews of the products in the sectors they cover. There are plenty of publications about Cycling, it's a very popular sport. The problem is that the monetization of the affiliate system creates a massive incentive for people to crowd out the real people who do this. Instead of googling which bike to buy and being met with a number of fairly reputable publications which specialize in this stuff, you're met with Business Insider and other trash which are all just following the incentive of trying to get their affiliate link clicked between the time you start researching and the time you innevitably buy something off Amazon. I think the MCN example above is actually really good - since no one expects to get an affiliate payment from Amazon from someone buying a motorcycle, the quality of the reviews for "Best motorbike under $5000" are about a million times better than "Best bike for under $500". The good reviews do exist, you just can't find them, because Amazon has completely screwed the click through path from "Google X product -> Purchase on Amazon"

jpalomaki 5y ago
If people are not willing to pay for content and block ads, affiliate and content marketing schemes might be the future of these sites as well.
- zo1 5y ago
  I think we may have stumbled upon an unfortunate circumstance of how our brains work, and it's being actively exploited (like say how we agree that marketing cigarettes to kids is bad kind of thing?). We could reasonably say that we are willing to pay for content, we're just not attuned to seeing how "free" content is actually detrimental to us and is being monetized behind the scenes. At the same time, Google/Amazon latched on to it and are taking advantage of it for their own gains. Either way, we're stuck in a downward feedback loop that's only going to make this worse until one of the big players falls over.
dazc 5y ago
The likes of motorcycle and car magazines/review sites are also incentivised by money, it may not be quite so obvious how though? Let's say I want to do an honest review of bikes under $500, where am I going to get the bikes from in order to do this? Shall I go out and buy them?
- Traster 5y ago
  This is covered by standard journalists all the time - Linus (from LTT) talks about this all the time. Of course manufacturers give samples to test, but that's table stakes, there is absolutely not an expectation of specific positive coverage.

prepend 5y ago

> There is little incentive for anyone to curate a list of 'best bikes under $500' for any reason other than this though? “Back in the olden days” people would write pages because they loved the subject area and wanted to share knowledge/show off/start conversations. So it was very common for people who were just really into bikes to spend some time sharing their thoughts on what the top 10 bikes under $500 were because they wanted to help people buy good bikes. There was no monetization, or at least direct monetization. Those sites may still be around, but monetization has driven low-quality content higher up in SEO so the bike lover (who probably doesn’t care about SEO) doesn’t get content seen.

ackbar03 5y ago
>There was no monetization, or at least direct monetization Maybe they can try affiliate links! I think that was how the "crappy" sites used to do it in the old days. I never really understood the whole seo game and if anyone actually made money or just pretended to make money so they can sell courses
- prepend 5y ago
  I think some people like sharing knowledge. I keep a blog where I just write things that are interesting to me and maybe to others. I used to have affiliate links because I was playing around with stuff, but don’t think any have worked in 10+ years. I have no monetization plan or ever figure I’ll make money off the site. But it costs me nothing to run, so that’s ok. There are many sites like this, but they are much harder to find because Google isn’t able to differentiate meaningful content from the facade of meaningful content (ie, SEO). It’s like the degradation in academic papers where groups will reference each other like crazy to game rankings.