I call this post the Accidental Disclosure Manifesto because that’s what it became in the course of writing and recording it. Sometimes, these things happen. So kick back, grab a beer, and enjoy the ride…
Disclosure
If you’re catching this in a reader, you can watch the video on my blog, or here’s the Veoh link: Blogging Ethics 101c – The Accidental Disclosure Manifesto.
Many bloggers feel that the ethical high road to take regarding affiliate link disclosure is to have a disclosure policy or to announce in-post the existence of affiliate links.
You are probably going to be shocked at this, but I disagree.
The fact that a blogger would make some money if you signed up or purchased something through an affiliate link does not in any way make that product or service less valuable, wanted, or effective to someone. And that makes disclosure a non-issue. Disclosure is a misdirection from the real issues: trust and value.
When it comes to affiliate links, the truly ethical thing to do is only link to products and services that are a perfect match for your audience and that will truly benefit them.
The critical test you must pass
Here is the crucial test to pass: If you recommend something, and someone buys it through your affiliate link, would they respect you more, afterwards, or less? If I buy something because of you, why on earth should I begrudge you a couple bucks? That makes no sense to me.
Messed up in the head
There is something messed up in people’s heads, where they’re thinking: I’m not going to let this guy make extra money off of me! People treat it as though they were being taken advantage of. Excuse me? How do you figure that? If you get fair value for the money, how, exactly, were you taken advantage of if the blogger gets her affiliate commission? I really can’t figure this out, can you?
It’s a matter of trust
I know you’re thinking: “But if you have affiliate links and don’t disclose that fact, you are violating the trust of your readers!”
WRONG! Not providing the value my readers expect would be a violation of their trust. Do you understand the difference? Affiliate links have nothing to do with that. That strategy is NOT CONTENT-SPECIFIC. In order for me to provide valuable content, if I were to include affiliate links, then they must be… wait for it… VALUABLE to my readers.
Well, no duh, right?
So why do so many people do it wrong? Why have affiliate links become associated with abusing the trust of your readers?
The greed factor
Because people get greedy and they change their focus so that their content strategy becomes about the money instead of about delivering value to their readership. When that change happens, that blogger has just sold out. The existence or non-existence of disclosure means nothing, because most people won’t know or care. Tell me, when was the last time you deliberately looked for a blogger’s disclosure policy? You see? That had nothing to do with whether or not you felt you could trust him.
And it’s hard to do! It is so… very… hard! My standards for this are so high, that there are only four affiliate programs that I have ever used on this blog: Brian Clark’s Teaching Sells program (which I am a member of), Yaro Starak’s Blog Profits Blueprint book, Joel Comm’s Internet Millionaire, and good ol’ Amazon Associates. There may be more in the future, but for now, that’s it.
Believe in what you’re selling
The only one I’ve made anything on is Teaching Sells, which is the one I believe in the most, personally. That should tell you something about affiliate selling right there. If I have any regrets, it would be for Internet Millionaire (notice: no link for that one). The irony of this post on disclosure is that of course you understand that these are affiliate links — how could they be anything else? 
Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!
But you see this is a very treacherous and narrow path! You cannot betray your readers’ trust! It is so easy to screw it up that most of you shouldn’t bother with this stuff at all. Other than letting greed get the best of us, a problem with this is that reviewing the same stuff as everyone else doesn’t exactly make for amazing content.
Two great examples
But if you want to sell via affiliate programs, probably the two best people (in my experience) to learn from (certainly better than me) when it comes to including affiliate links in a way that creates value are Maki from Dosh Dosh and Yaro Starak from Entrepreneur’s Journey. Maki’s almost clinically objective writing style makes you feel like you are getting unbiased information and his experience and knowledge are clearly evident. Maki’s audience is huge, and they trust him. Yaro Starak writes very thorough and balanced reviews. He does a great job of weighing a product or service against his own experience and isn’t afraid to say what he doesn’t like.
Michael I agree with you completely. The trust is all about directing people to products, information, etc that has value. If you keep doing that it should make no difference whether or not there’s affiliate code in the link.
I do think when you see someone recommending something that has the potential for making money you need to take the money into consideration as to what’s motivating the recommendation, but the money isn’t the only thing to take into consideration.
In the end it’s the value you provide that establishes and maintains trust not the presence or lack of an affiliate link.
By the way I completely agree with your selection of programs to promote. I’ve been with Teaching Sells since the beginning and I plan on recommending it more often on my site with an affiliate link. I’m not worried at all about losing trust, because I believe anyone who goes on to sign up will see how valuable it is and thank me for pointing them there.
I’ve been wondering about this very thing myself. I don’t have any affiliate links yet because I don’t have a large readership (yet).
I was planning on using Amazon in the future because my market could benefit from my book and movie recommendations. I only want to recommend ones I’ve read/seen myself.
The thing is, I don’t think my market knows a lot about such things as affiliate programs. How do you feel about me explaining it and how using those links could be a tiny ‘thank you’ for enjoying my content? By letting them know it could help pay my hosting (for example) which I now pay for myself (though I don’t mind and it isn’t very much).
I was wondering if that approach might even encourage the use.
What do you think? Thanks for any feedback.
@ Steven – Thanks, I love it when people agree with me!
Seriously, I just think it needs to be pointed out that the existence of affiliate links or a disclosure policy are red herrings to the real issues of trust and value.
My primary goal here is to make money by selling professional services, which is why I don’t have advertising on the blog or in the feed. But if I find a product or service that is a perfect fit for my audience, I see affiliate commissions as simply icing on the cake. I’ve certainly recommended plenty of stuff without using affiliate links, even when I could have. I’m just not greedy. Greed stinks, and people can smell it a mile away.
@ Karen – If your audience trusts you and you are behaving in a trustworthy manner, revealing the existence of such links will not hurt that. But neither will not revealing them, because the trust isn’t based on whether or not you make money from those links. Undisclosed affiliate links are not an automatic violation of trust.
If you just can’t see it that way, then do what you feel is right, and your audience will respect you for that.
All I will say in addition to that is that if what you say about your market is true, then you most certainly stand to benefit from affiliate sales. But getting your traffic up will help a lot.
> Why have affiliate links become associated with abusing the trust of your readers?
Also perhaps the greed of the companies that try affiliate links to pull in customers to sub-standard products and services. I know a lot of quality products and services can be purchased through affiliate links, but as you say it’s up to the integrity of the blogger to steer his/her readers to only the quality affiliates, not the rubbish that may pay a higher/larger commission.
And Steven has a good point too – if you don’t disclose and your readers notice anyhow, they may see a perceived conflict of interest.
Thanks Michael.
Yes, increasing my readership is the main focus now. I don’t plan on adding any affiliate programs for quite a while.
And I’m in Teaching Sells also…so there’s other plans too
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I don’t see any problem with people putting in affiliate links without disclosing it. For me personally, with the exception of Amazon, I would probably disclose it just to avoid the perception that I was trying to “get one over” on my readers by slipping in an affiliate link under the guise that I had nothing to gain whatsoever.
I like to support my fellow bloggers by purchasing things through affiliate links. I’m not sure why anyone would have a problem with that?!?
See, that’s what I’m talking about: why does that perception exist? How is it a deception? Who told anyone that to do otherwise was a deception? That’s just mis-conceived thinking.
For some reason, people don’t like it when bloggers earn money this way. I’ve read some books about blogging and they all take about full disclosure. Maybe people just think bloggers are supposed to completely uninfluenced by third party companies.
@ Eric – There is no good reason for people to not like it when a blogger earns money using a method that never compromises content. There is a difference between being influenced and being a total whore about it. The problem is that it’s a slippery slope from one to the other, and before they know it, a lot of bloggers find themselves at the bottom.
The difference between affiliate links and paid text links is that it’s quite easy to control what affiliate programs will be promoted vs. automatic paid link scripts which nearly always link to junk.
You know I was thinking about this very thing the other day when I was adding links to Amazon books on my site. To disclose or not disclose.
In the end, I decided that it really was a non-issue because first of all, all the products I would recommend are ones that I have personally used and feel would be beneficial for others.
Secondly, prior to this I had read a post by Steve Pavlina that talked about people who begrudge the fact that you are making money from your blog/website. Basically he said that all they want to do is abuse you by taking everything you are giving without you receiving anything in return.
These people are to be avoided because all they will do is suck you dry and generally make you regret the day you thought to help other people.
It really does come down to a matter of trust as you point out. As long as your audience trusts you and knows that you have their best interests at heart than there is nothing wrong with using an affiliate link.
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Excluding twitter for the moment, why not use an existing paradigm to deal with affiliate links – semantically as microformats?. Something as simple as rel=”affiliate” might be sufficient. A more complex microformat might identify the advertiser or network (a la rel=”license” microformatâ€).
This way, the small percentage of people who may be concerned can download the inevitable plugin if needed, management and links to privacy and disclosure pages automated, etc. Of course, the real drivers of this may need to the actual affiliate programs – if CJ for example put this in their auto code generation tool.
As for Twitter, the major URL shorteners like BudURL could simply set up a complementary domain for affiliate/sponsored links and maintain the disclosure on their site via a link preview function. Again, it would help if Twitter then autotagged the URL.
A modest proposal, at least. And requires no one else’s permission to start!