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.