5 ms·
Tell HN: I made $11.21 on a single Hacker News Comment and so can you
6 days ago I commented on a thread about 37% chocolate. In my response I linked to some dark godiva chocolate on Amazon and included my affiliate tag in the link.
When I was called out on including the affiliate tag I promised to follow up in a week. Well I'm a day early, but I'm calling it close enough.
If you didn't know, Amazon will pay you for referrals to their site that result in sales. Not just for the product you linked to, but for all products purchased in that visit. This can pay off pretty well.
301 of you clicked on the link in my comment. That's more than I anticipated. 3 things of chocolate sold. Commission on that doesn't add up to much. 7% on $63 is about $4. I made almost triple that because of other things people purchased.
The largest and strangest of those purchases being a Shimano RD-M591 Deore SGS Rear Derailleur
(for a bike) ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003OWPRLI?tag=itemsid-20 )
So here are the results:
Items Shipped Revenue Advertising Fees
Amazon.com Items Shipped 6 $98.97 $6.16
Third Party Items Shipped 5 $109.25 $5.05
Items Shipped 11 $208.22 $11.21
I don't think I'm going to get rich by this method. The turn out was way better than I expected. I though 40 people would click and 1 would buy an HDMI cable for $4 and I'd make 28 cents.
Probably I violated a Hacker News Rule somewhere, and I apologize for that. I don't think this is much different than linking to your own site that has ads in it so I don't feel too bad. In truth I really just wanted the click through stats, all the other numbers were just incidental.
Here is the thread I commented on:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7125646
- drakaal 13y agoSorry for the bad formatting on the table I apparently don't know how to mark down to get the tabs for a psuedo table.
- possibilistic 13y agoThe comments on HN are not parsed as markdown. * case (newline) * in (newline) * point (newline) Double asterisk for bold? Nope. [Link](http://google.com http://google.com) I believe the only formatting options are these: 1) encloded by single asterisk = italics 2) four leading spaces for <pre> / monospaced great for code, quotes, etc.
- tzs 13y agoClose. You only need two or more leading spaces. Here's the list of formatting options: http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
- jayzalowitz 13y agoSo basically if i link to a horse mask like this http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003G4IM4S?tag=t0c8f-20 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003G4IM4S?tag=t0c8f-20 on hacker news, it will make money (Ill donate anything I get from this to Glide), I wonder what the most successful hacks you can do with this are... writing a pinterest chrome app? a reddit app?
- benologist 13y agoThis should be put to good use with links tagged automatically with some useful organization and overwriting others to remove any financial incentive to comment. EFF has an affiliate tag "electronicfro-20".
- pizzeys 13y agoHm. I wonder how Amazon/other affiliates see this? I mean, it's obviously different from, but reminds me of, those malware operators/dodgy ISP's injecting their own referral id into links. Is there any precedent of sites with user submitted content doing it on their own sites?
- duskwuff 13y agoYes, lots of it. There are even service (e.g, Viglink - http://viglink.com/ http://viglink.com/) that specialize in replacing/modifying affiliate links automatically. What the companies running the referral programs think of these services is unknown. I can't imagine they like it...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- lowglow 13y agoThis was how pinterest was making money at one point IIRC -- they stopped after people started turning on the idea.
- stp-ip 13y agoAmazon actively shutsdown projects, which automaticly replace affiliate links. Most still running projects are just too small to be noticed yet.
- tlrobinson 13y agoI added a custom search provider to Chrome with an affiliate tag for an organization I like to support, so whenever I want to find something on Amazon I just type "a [query]" and it automatically applies the affiliate tag and takes me to the search results. Here's the URL for EFF (with "%s" for Chrome search templates): http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=%s&tag=electronicfro-20 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...
- jfoster 13y agoWould be interesting to know how you go after this post, too. I imagine more people will click through to the original post after this.
- znmeb 13y agoI believe it's against Amazon's Terms of Service. They're bigger than you are and they will sue you if you violate their TOS. So check it out!
- stp-ip 13y agoAnd even if you do not yet violate their TOS, they do change them to their liking and kick you out anyway. Relying on Amazon as a partner is not really something I can recommend.
- whichdan 13y agoHow long after clicking on an affiliate link do purchases count for? And does each successively clicked affiliate link override the previous one? Also, as an affiliate, do you see any metadata, or just which items were purchased overall? I like the EFF idea posted in a few other comments, but I'm wondering how affiliate links are handled in general.
- msinghai 13y agoMoney is credited to the affiliate account after the product gets shipped; so that's around 24 hours. Yes, each successively clicked affiliate link overwrites the previous one. Any metadata? No, affiliates just see which items were purchased and the quantities. Hope that helps.
- whichdan 13y agoThat's interesting - thanks!
- judk 13y ago"You will not issue any press release or make any other public communication with respect to this Operating Agreement, your use of the Content, or your participation in the Program." Interesting, talking about being an affiliate is a violation of the operating agreement.
- rgbrgb 13y agoAffiliate links seem pretty interesting but I'm not sure they're actually positive for the consumer. In some cases it's a way to support legitimate content but I've seen too many "reviews" that were actually advertisements. Like ideally you want to use ads to make good content free and inform people about products they actually want. I'm working on something kind of related to affiliate links (users make money) but the affiliate's motivation is centered around getting their own content seen, so hopefully we're aligning goals of visitors and posters (make something great, get paid). EDIT: Planning to post something more substantial to HN but here's a preview for people in this thread https://surfer.io/ https://surfer.io/
- nkurz 13y agoWhile I appreciate the insight into the results, I think it be extremely bad for HN to encourage or allow this practice. I've upvoted your submission in the hopes that it gains further attention, and flagged it and the post containing the affiliate link. I realize this affiliate links are a divisive issue, but my hope is that they will be reviewed and your account will be banned. I don't know whether others agree with me, but I think adding affiliate links to comments here is uncivil and intolerable behaviour.
- kassner 13y agoThis is not the same than posting a blog link with Adsense on it? The content is being presented and someone is getting a few cents...