10 Tips - Using Affiliate Links in your Blog
- By: Linda Buquet [privmsg - website] On 27th Aug 2005
Most affiliates just slap some Adsense ads on their blogs to try to generate revenue. Granted that's the easy way. But if you really want to monetize your blog, high converting affiliate programs can generate better income.
Darren over at ProBlogger is doing a great mini-series about affiliate programs and blogging. This is the last one of the series so you can click links that go back to previous entries. The one he wrote last night is titled "10 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on your Blog"
We’ve now looked at a number of popular affiliate programs for bloggers and today I’d like to finish off this series by giving a few tips that should help bloggers get the best results out of any affiliate program that they choose to run with.
One of the 10 tips Darren discusses is whether or not you should identify affiliate links as such in your blog. This is a question Nick struggled with here awhile back too. ThreadWatch: Blogs, Affiliate Links and Reputation
My personal feeling (although I may be biased) is that if the affiliate links are well targeted, contextual to the conversation, a product that fits and that your readers may be interested in, then you don't need to identify them. That's providing it's done tastefully and the whole blog isn't full of affiliate links.
After reading Darren's 10 steps - how do you feel about affiliate links in blogs? Do they turn you off? Do you use them in your blogs?
Linda Buquet
5 Star Affiliate Programs
it depends on context
In my opinion an affiliate link that is clearly an advertisement doesn't need any highlighting. If I say "you can buy it here" the link doesn't need to be identified... unless I have been granted some authority by my audience.
So if a company representative on a company-sponsored information portal says "this is great, get it here" it should probably be disclosed somewhere that there is a commission involved. If a blogger says "I found this and thinks it's way cool" I don't see any need to know if he's shilling or not.
Those are the two extremes... Now go evaluate those "BestWebHostsintheUniverse.tld" websites where the "Top Ten Webhosts of the month" are all affiliate links. Does the reader have an expectation of fairness for the TopTen ratings? If yes, better be clear about those affiliate commissions (and probably the whole voting scam, too!)
I don't think it hurts to identify them
I've found that people appreciate when you identify stuff as an affiliate link, even if you don't have to. Those that don't care -- well, the don't care and will buy either way. Those that do care, appreciate the forthrightness. I can totally relate to Nick in that respect.
More Commentary
Here are a couple new blogs on the topic.
[url=http://www.adjab.com/2005/08/29/amazon-affiliate-linking-your-thoughts/ ]Adjab: Amazon affiliate linking: Your thoughts?[/url]
The above refers to the Jason Calacanis Media, Technology and Business blog. Jason owns a whole bunch of popular blogs. If if you scroll down on this blog entry, there are lots of great comments from his readers - most don't seem to mind the affiliate links.