4 ms·

Yarr, smooth use of an affiliate tag there, kirse.

staunch 17y ago
Not cool in my book. tag=f033-20 -- It seems like the affiliate ID is also intentionally made to look like it isn't one. LAME.
- mediaman 17y ago
  Does that actually make any money though? I often wonder what the purpose of chasing a few bucks here and there is if it doesn't make much and isn't scalable. Maybe it does make some money.
  - leviathant 17y ago
    Back when people bought CDs, I'd make several grand in the course of a week each time Nine Inch Nails album preorders went live on Amazon & I posted links on my (well-known among fans) website. Heck, I made $500 off MP3 downloads of the Ghosts album when that came out. This allowed me to get better hosting, and to send money to other people who've helped me with the site, as well as fund contests for readers. The Amazon cookie persists for 24 hours, so if you click on that Kindle link today, but then tonight, go home and buy a defibrillator or 10 camcorders, the guy who slipped his affiliate link onto HN gets the commission on that. I use those as examples because they're things people have bought after clicking through NIN mp3/pre-order links. It's also worth noting that Amazon does a flat 10% rate on Kindle sales for affiliates... all other consumer electronics are a flat 4%. Amazon Associates is like free money if you run a blog, and so long as you're up front about that, I think that's fine. Lots of people are going to Amazon anyway. Posting your own affiliate link to a site like this and not disclosing affiliation is a little skeezy.
    - leviathant 17y ago
      In the interest of diffusing knowledge - NIN gives away studio recordings for free these days, and that saw the end of me getting $20-$50 a month from casual user visits to our music/merch page (theninhotline.net/features/merch) Since then, I've changed our merch page around to aggregate eBay searches, and now make about the same from casual viewers as I did when the merch page was Amazon-centric. I also make $20-$60 a month from tshirt commissions through Goodrock. I'm certainly not quitting my day job, but I like that this hobby of mine has become self-sustaining.
  - aff 17y ago
    I managed to get my Amazon.com Kindle affiliate link onto the front page of Reddit. It got several hundred upvotes, and based on my experience with Reddit, at least 10,000 clicks. End result? I sold 4 kindles, and made about $120. Not bad, but don't expect high conversion rates on this kind of thing.
jraines 17y ago
I guess you're not being critical, but I'm going to defend kirse anyway. I think it's disingenuous to use affiliate links if someone said, "Hey, where can I buy a Kindle?" or "what's the best ebook reader I can buy online?". But in this case, if you saw this link and said "Oh crap! This is news to me and I've been waiting for a price drop" . . . then by all means kirse deserves an affiliate payout.
- KWD 17y ago
  I see no excuse for dropping an affiliate link on a submission to HackerNews. It applies not just to the kindle, but anything one would buy after follwoing the link to Amazon, and even at a later time when purchase is not even related to this article. I visit comments first, before link, but I'm sure many others would be impacted. Affiliate links should be discouraged altogether on a site like this, and worthy of banning/suspension.
  - jraines 17y ago
    Why?
    - metaguri 17y ago
      1. Submit link with affiliate thingy to HN 2. Get people on mechanical turk to upmod your submission until it takes off 3. Profit?
      - jraines 17y ago
        Isn't 2. what make it evil though?
- leviathant 17y ago
  Hmm. Getting sidetracked, but how is it disingenuous to use your affiliate link when someone asks you where to buy a Kindle? They're only available on Amazon, and it doesn't raise the price at all if they buy through an affiliate link. In my opinion, lines are crossed when you suggest a less than optimal solution/link because it'll earn you more money. For example - on my NIN site, when an album becomes available for pre-sale, I list each vendor that we find along with their price, even if they're selling it cheaper than Amazon. If I were to ONLY suggest Amazon for pre-orders when I knew better deals were to be had, that's where I feel one starts losing ethics points. I think the bottom line, for a site like HN, or a message board, or anything like that -- it's up to the owner/administrator of the site. I don't know how much work goes into the administration of HN, but the content is almost entirely crowdsourced. Were it my site, I'd probably strip (but not replace) all affiliate code from links, but I don't really think it's unethical to have posted that to HN with a link. Were it me, I'd have commented in the interest of full disclosure. And that's pretty much all I was doing with my first post - disclosing something that may be of interest to readers here :)

Not cool in my book. tag=f033-20 -- It seems like the affiliate ID is also intentionally made to look like it isn't one. LAME.

mediaman 17y ago
Does that actually make any money though? I often wonder what the purpose of chasing a few bucks here and there is if it doesn't make much and isn't scalable. Maybe it does make some money.
- leviathant 17y ago
  Back when people bought CDs, I'd make several grand in the course of a week each time Nine Inch Nails album preorders went live on Amazon & I posted links on my (well-known among fans) website. Heck, I made $500 off MP3 downloads of the Ghosts album when that came out. This allowed me to get better hosting, and to send money to other people who've helped me with the site, as well as fund contests for readers. The Amazon cookie persists for 24 hours, so if you click on that Kindle link today, but then tonight, go home and buy a defibrillator or 10 camcorders, the guy who slipped his affiliate link onto HN gets the commission on that. I use those as examples because they're things people have bought after clicking through NIN mp3/pre-order links. It's also worth noting that Amazon does a flat 10% rate on Kindle sales for affiliates... all other consumer electronics are a flat 4%. Amazon Associates is like free money if you run a blog, and so long as you're up front about that, I think that's fine. Lots of people are going to Amazon anyway. Posting your own affiliate link to a site like this and not disclosing affiliation is a little skeezy.
  - leviathant 17y ago
    In the interest of diffusing knowledge - NIN gives away studio recordings for free these days, and that saw the end of me getting $20-$50 a month from casual user visits to our music/merch page (theninhotline.net/features/merch) Since then, I've changed our merch page around to aggregate eBay searches, and now make about the same from casual viewers as I did when the merch page was Amazon-centric. I also make $20-$60 a month from tshirt commissions through Goodrock. I'm certainly not quitting my day job, but I like that this hobby of mine has become self-sustaining.
- aff 17y ago
  I managed to get my Amazon.com Kindle affiliate link onto the front page of Reddit. It got several hundred upvotes, and based on my experience with Reddit, at least 10,000 clicks. End result? I sold 4 kindles, and made about $120. Not bad, but don't expect high conversion rates on this kind of thing.

jraines 17y ago

I guess you're not being critical, but I'm going to defend kirse anyway. I think it's disingenuous to use affiliate links if someone said, "Hey, where can I buy a Kindle?" or "what's the best ebook reader I can buy online?". But in this case, if you saw this link and said "Oh crap! This is news to me and I've been waiting for a price drop" . . . then by all means kirse deserves an affiliate payout.

KWD 17y ago
I see no excuse for dropping an affiliate link on a submission to HackerNews. It applies not just to the kindle, but anything one would buy after follwoing the link to Amazon, and even at a later time when purchase is not even related to this article. I visit comments first, before link, but I'm sure many others would be impacted. Affiliate links should be discouraged altogether on a site like this, and worthy of banning/suspension.
- jraines 17y ago
  Why?
  - metaguri 17y ago
    1. Submit link with affiliate thingy to HN 2. Get people on mechanical turk to upmod your submission until it takes off 3. Profit?
    - jraines 17y ago
      Isn't 2. what make it evil though?
leviathant 17y ago
Hmm. Getting sidetracked, but how is it disingenuous to use your affiliate link when someone asks you where to buy a Kindle? They're only available on Amazon, and it doesn't raise the price at all if they buy through an affiliate link. In my opinion, lines are crossed when you suggest a less than optimal solution/link because it'll earn you more money. For example - on my NIN site, when an album becomes available for pre-sale, I list each vendor that we find along with their price, even if they're selling it cheaper than Amazon. If I were to ONLY suggest Amazon for pre-orders when I knew better deals were to be had, that's where I feel one starts losing ethics points. I think the bottom line, for a site like HN, or a message board, or anything like that -- it's up to the owner/administrator of the site. I don't know how much work goes into the administration of HN, but the content is almost entirely crowdsourced. Were it my site, I'd probably strip (but not replace) all affiliate code from links, but I don't really think it's unethical to have posted that to HN with a link. Were it me, I'd have commented in the interest of full disclosure. And that's pretty much all I was doing with my first post - disclosing something that may be of interest to readers here :)