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When It Comes to Blogging, What is Ethical and What is Not?
By JLP | June 13, 2007
Whenever I review a book or something along those lines, I usually have a link to Amazon.com. Should a reader click on that Amazon link and buy something from that visit to Amazon, I get paid a small commission (larger if the volume is good enough). Although I mention advertising relationships when they come up, I haven’t ever mentioned or noted that the Amazon links are affiliate links because I always just assumed (there’s that bad, bad word) that people knew that they were affiliate links.
Is my practice ethical?
The reason this is important to me is that lots of bloggers are doing the affiliate thing with lots of different companies and most of the time they do not mention the fact to their readers. For instance, have you noticed all the posts about various credit cards and credit card rewards programs? It seems like every blogger and their brother is writing up posts on credit cards with links to specific cards. Those links are affiliate links.
Is that practice ethical?
Does either practice (my Amazon links and other bloggers linking to credit cards) make a blogger seem less trustworthy?
Finally, I’ll bring this up before someone else does. If you’ll scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page, you’ll notice a bunch of text links. One of those links is to a payday loan company. I orginally agreed to advertise for them for six months. As soon as their term expires that will be the end of my payday loan advertising venture. At first I rationalized that if they don’t advertise with me they’ll go somewhere else and why shouldn’t I get their money. However, I did a lot of thinking about it and decided that I shouldn’t be promoting something I don’t agree with especially since this blog is basically an online extension of me.
Please don’t misunderstand me. This isn’t an “I’m better than everyone else” post. Rather, I just want you to know where I stand on these matters.
Now it’s your turn to weigh in.
Topics: Blogging | 20 Comments »
June 13th, 2007 at 2:48 am
I didn’t realise that you bloggers were benefiting from affiliate links for ages. It doesn’t bother me.
There is a british money site (www.moneysavingexpert.com) that marks all affiliate links and offers non-affiliate links as well. This is appropriate for them but I think it would be overkill for a blogger.
On my own blog, I’m not using affiliate links partly because I don’t know whether to go with say amazon.co.uk or amazon.com as I haven’t got a good handle on my audience yet. Its not really an ethical decision.
I’m not a fan of payday loan companies, but since I didn’t notice the ad was there, I wouldn’t criticise you for having it. I wouldn’t solicit them myself, but if they show up through adsense, then tough.
June 13th, 2007 at 3:08 am
I think affiliate links are fine as long as they are genuine recommendations or provide useful contextual information in the post. Readers are adults. They’ll decide whether the book or card or whatever is good for them or not.
The bunch of text links however are pure ads. I think they should be screened.
June 13th, 2007 at 4:42 am
The links at the bottom don’t bother me – that’s clearly advertisement support of the blog and you say at that you don’t endorse these products. However, you certainly wouldn’t want to accept an ad from that could cheat people. I’m not sure of the ethics, but you would lose credibility. As an extreme hypothetical example: you blog about how outrageous payday loans were and then had a payday loan company ad at the bottom. – not unethical, but you lose cred as blogger. Unethical would be to have a blog entry about how fantastic payday loans are even though you actually think payday loans are a ripoff.
June 13th, 2007 at 8:09 am
I have never perceived an ethical conflict on your blog. It seems fairly clear, what’s advertising and what’s not, at least to me it does.
June 13th, 2007 at 8:28 am
If this is something that’s weighing on your mind, perhaps it would be best to highlight affiliate links by making a slight change to your CSS and add a .affiliate class to your links. That way your regular links show as they normally do but when you create a link as a .affiliate it could be highlighted a different color, or in a different font or have a box around it. By simply adding an explanation of why those links look different you’ll clue everyone in on when clicking something might benefit you.
Personally, I always assume (dumb word) that any external link on a blog that leads to a merchant is an affiliate link and it doesn’t bother me unless the blog posts sole purpose is to generate money through that link.
June 13th, 2007 at 8:56 am
If there is anything generally unethical with linking to affiliate ads, then the whole concept of monetizing a blog/website is corrupt.
The only thing I’d say you shouldn’t do is push things you don’t personally agree with. So I’d say it would be better for you not to have taken the payday loan ad. However you’ve already stated you don’t intend to do that.
I have no problem whatsoever with amazon.com links, etc. that are behind products you willingly endorse. Heck, that’s what the business world is all about — promoting products that you believe in.
DB
June 13th, 2007 at 9:02 am
There shouldn’t be any problem with it, and you shouldn’t have to disclose it. Television and radio broadcasts rarely ever openly state that the commercials are paid advertisements.
Now, if you are writing an article specifically about a service, and you are getting paid, then I think you should disclose it.
June 13th, 2007 at 11:54 am
I respectfully offer my opinion to your query, “Is my practice ethical?”. If you’ve accepted money from a vendor that sells a service you “don’t agree with”, rationalizing that if you don’t someone else will, then you’ve likely missed the mark. Simply asking these questions though makes it clear to me that you trying to be a credible writer and avoid conflicts.
Is it ethical for bloggers to write about a specific vendor, and fail to disclose a financial relationship? Of course not! Newspaper, Magazine, TV, and Radio ads are TRANSPARENT revenue generators for their producers. These ads are as obvious to the reader (or viewer), as are the banners or text links on this site labeled “ad or sponsor”. But remember, in traditional media there is a firewall between the editorial staff and the ad sales folks. As a blogger you are BOTH.
I have to say that the more ads and affiliate links I see on a blog, the less weight (or credibility) I give the writer’s view. The disclaimer stating that “AFM DOES NOT necessarily recommend these products/services” doesn’t help. It tells this reader that you’ll take sponsor money even if you think they’re not good enough to recommend, which I’m certain you don’t intend. Build credibility with your audience by thoroughly vetting these sponsors, and posting ads for those vendors that you KNOW are brilliant.
Keep up the good work (and writing), and don’t worry, you’re on the right track. Best regards!
June 13th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
I think that, especially in the case of Amazon.com, affiliate links are completely ethical. The reader can decide whether or not to purchase the book from Amazon or not. Amazon is paying you the commission – it’s not like anything adverse is affecting your reader (i.e. it’s no money out of their pocket).
I don’t, however, think we should promote things with which we don’t support / agree with, so I think it’s good that you are not going to continue your relationship with the payday loan company.
June 13th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
I generally agree with the above comments. I’ve experimented with affiliate links (I’ve made about $0.41 in affiliate income so far!). I don’t think I’ve perceived much bias in the mainstream personal finance blogs resulting from affiliate links.
I disagree with the argument, though, that affiliate links are akin to radio or TV ads, or to monetizing blogs through ads. Affiliate links are more like infomercials. If you’re providing a review of a product, and you benefit directly from whether your review is good or bad (who’s going to click on your affiliate link if the review is bad?), then the review is almost certainly not objective.
On the other hand, ads from adsense or other sources, are at least somewhat independent of content.
News sources generally are expected to keep their content development and advertising departments completely independent of each other. Blogs blur that line.
And while I haven’t seen any “bias” in personal finance blogs resulting from affiliate links, I have seen unnecessary posts made simply as an excuse to post affiliate links. The credit card posts are the most obvious. Some sites seem to post bi-weekly or monthly “credit card roundups” simply to have an excuse to use affiliate links.
In those cases, the content is being massaged specifically to drive affiliate traffic. Perhaps the blogger really does believe firmly that these cards are great. But that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
June 13th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
I generally agree with the others, and I don’t have any problem with AFM, but I do think that there is a line somewhere…. basically, for me, I think it isn’t necessarily correlated to the number or frequency of ads, per se. It has to do more with the proportion of original content. As long as you’re pumping out original content then I don’t care what affiliate links you have in there, as long as they’re relevant *and* you’re not being deceptive about them (saying that you’ve used a product or read a book when you haven’t, etc.).
June 13th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
For post, I have a simple guideline: there will never be a paid post on my blog. (Didn’t add this in until recently, I figure my readers know where I stand, but I added that in as I kept getting contacted for paid reviews or post).
For post with affiliate links, I throw them in there when I remember to, depending on their relevance. Same treatment for the reviews or mentions, regardless if the review was good, neutral, or bad. (And to be honest, I believe I only have a handful of affiliate links).
As for text link ads, I avoid adult and gambling sites. Pay day loan is a bit iffy, I did have one link up before for a month or two, and rejected a few. Generally I just review the site and make a judgment call on how shady it is.
At the end, I don’t really care what other people do on their blog. If they’re obviously dishonest in their posting and advertising policy, then I flag them as such and move on.
Most people have their own view on what’s acceptable and what’s not, as long as they’re consistent and make clear their intentions, then it’s probably not that big of a deal…
June 14th, 2007 at 1:22 am
It took me sometime to figure out that those Amazon links are affiliate links – it doesn’t bother me as long as the post is genuine. When bloggers “try” hard to sell affiliate links, it becomes very obvious in the style of writing. Although, I would appreciate (it’s personal…I won’t hold it against anyone), if there is a small mention at the end of the post that says something to the effect “the post contains affiliate links” — won’t serve much purpose except some increased transparency.
I have no issues with the text links at the bottom of the page either. They are far far away from your main content – and barely readable
As for the question of being ethical – the world is polarized one way or the other, one man’s idiot is another man’s hero, so all “ethical” advice should be taken with a grain of salt. [ what follows next is very well said by Cap in the above comment..so I won't repeat it]
June 14th, 2007 at 7:16 am
Is it ethical to do what you are doing? I say yes, others seem to agree!
It would be unethical if you falsely gave the book rave reviews just to get people to hit Amazon for it and artificially line your pockets.
June 14th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Disclosure, Transparency, & Explicitness – I have tremendous passion about this subject because this is exactly what’s missing in financial services. I know first hand that’s the case in the retirement plan (401K) business. Participants are routinely soaked with pervasive, excessive, hidden expenses. It’s easy for those accepting payments (regardless of their size) to rationalize; that’s what providers and their reps do every day.
So let me understand a few of the previous comments. Bloggers getting paid to write a specific post is NOT OK, but getting paid indirectly from a link included in a post IS OK? Why not just clearly label those affiliate links (inside a post) as paid or sponsored? For the same reason a retirement plan “advisor” fails to tell the employer that they receive a hidden payment from the mutual fund or (insurance company) in the recommended 401(k). Both are concerned that doing so might reduce their credibility, and they’re right! You can pretend it doesn’t create bias, but that’s just naïve.
Would the following disclaimer influence a reader’s opinion of the post (and writer)? “NOTE: I receive a payment when you click on the link for the company that markets the product (or service) discussed in this post. I also receive a sales commission of up to 7% of the value of any purchase you make.” The reader would at minimum be wary of any positive claims, because they know the writer has become by all counts a RETAILER of the product. Deny this if you will, but RETAILER you’ve become.
Oh yeah I forgot, “everyone” knows the writer can get paid from those links, just like they know about the hidden payments that come out of their retirement accounts. In the rush to “monetize” a blog, an honorable thing by the way, think hard before you establish a financial relationship with a company you write about.
June 14th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
I don’t mind. Now, please send me 10% for my positive posting ;o)
we don’t have to press a link to any of the ads etc on your or any other blogger’s websites. now if the companies you are affiliated with have tracking cookies that we don’t know about and that you don’t announce, that would be bad. but, again, we have a choice not to come to the blog.
June 14th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
I find some bloggers list a disclaimer saying that they do not endose advertisers on their site. Use your own due diligence. But to advertise or get paid for something you would not advocate is unethical. You are contradicting yourself.
June 18th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Life is filled with contradictions. There is no way to get around that. Most financial products when used improperly can be bad for the consumer. I use a disclaimer on my site, because there are some advertisers on my website where it would be very unlikely that I would use their services. I do not beleive that accepting advertising from them is unethical. If I strongly suspected that an advertiser was purposely doing harm or illegal practices then I would not accept advertsing from them. Other than that I choose not to have any other criteria because it reduces my profit and I am not sure where to draw the line on what is acceptable and what is not.
June 18th, 2007 at 11:27 am
Yes, everyone knows about affiliate links. If they don’t know, they aren’t likely to care.
That being said, personally, I’ll remove the affiliate ID from an Amazon URI. I’m a peculiar sort of guy… Whenever I get any Amazon link, I remove everything after the ASIN. Most of it is cookie crumb nonsense, and some of it is affiliate ID.
Personally, I don’t think it’s Amazon’s business who led me to their product, either through a cookie crumb or affiliate link. I’m not trying to cheat people like you out of money, I’m trying to protect my anonymity.
August 1st, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Whenever I need to make a purchase, sign up for a service, etc. I always go out of my way to find and use an affiliate link from someone that I know so they get a bit of jingle in their pocket. But maybe I’m just weird.