Ultimately the onus falls on the individual to educate themselves about how the world works. You can hope we have systems to negate the impacts of misleading marketing but there will always be people doing clever things to separate consumers from their money more effectively.
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I think this is precisely the misunderstanding that is going on in this thread. The idea that, each time a BB author posts a link to Amazon with an affiliate link, they are crossing their fingers and hoping to make money off it.
Instead every time there is any link to Amazon itās with an affiliate link. Itās just a blanket rule. It may even be automatically appended by the CMS.
By making it a blanket rule itās much less likely that authors are being influenced by the desire to make $$ by spuriously writing fake reviews in the hopes that you buy stuff. Rather, they just review stuff, or mention something in passing, link to it (which frequently means Amazon, if itās something you can buy) and as a blanket rule they use an affiliate link.
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Or the charity of your choice.
However, BB is expressly prohibited from asking anyone to do so:
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/operating/participation/
sure. and there will always be the āsome of the people you can please none of the timeā and they are nobodyās problem but their own.
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On Etsy it would be craftier than Amazon, so all dildo sweaters.
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ā¦not to mention they made their bad on a slippery slope with a grain of salt!
The funny part is that I never go in and look at what people buy at amazon after clicking the links. Itās like looking at the google search terms people put in to find their way to the website. I would be in a more or less constant state of terror if I looked at it every day.
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While I can see how one could make the ubiquity argument, Rob just pointed out that the authors all use their own Amazon Associate IDs which means each author profits specifically from how they write their posts and what they choose to link to, in addition to getting a cut of everything you purchased on Amazon during a 24 hour āsessionā as defined. The money apparently isnāt going into a collective pot to be dived up evenly, pirate crew style.
More than that, itās competitive. Our gift guides are, essentially, fights between us for your last click.
Xeniās giant lube tub is a masterful strategy. Itās funny, itās in keeping with the vibe of the site, and it carries a high probability of generating that eyelid-flickering āthen I closed the tabā psychic state whereby you have had enough of clicking things today.
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^this is amazing.
Itās like looking at the google search terms people put in to find their way to the website.
I find this tremendously amusing. A guy at work gets a report with search terms people use that turn up no hits. Itās easy to trolley him by just typing random shit into the search field. I know most sites would never write a post on the subject (because itās marketing suicide to show users how much you know about them) but Iād be fascinated to read something on the subject and I bet boingers buy some awesome shit.
What on Earth difference does that make?
If we agree that, as a blanket rule, affiliate links are added to every single link to Amazon, ThinkGeek and whatever else, you now think it makes a big difference if the money gets split evenly with the authors who havenāt posted in six months, and non-authors, etc?
Why not audit their process for subtracting BitCoin tips from their gross salaries too while youāre at it?
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Given the variety of different affiliate tags used by different contributors, this seems unlikely. And even if it is true, the choice to link to Amazon and not newegg or Powellās or somewhere like stack social is a conscious one. The consciousness of this decision is more evident when they decide to link somewhere other than Amazon.
But earlier you were suggesting that all these people bought the tea lights that you panned! (Not that you were lying, either there or when you claimed that most of the people in this thread were being paid to be here.)
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You donāt think individuals are motivated differently, even slightly, when they are working directly on their own pile of cash as opposed to a collective one? Rob just said itās competitive. But, as to arguments over collectivism, I think thatās an argument for another thread.
Amazon links are added systematically but mostly manually. Weāve experimented with automation and a lot of links have been put there that way.
In fact, I turned off one automation thing Iād set up, because it effectively concealed the affiliate nature of the link. Iād coded something that used javascript to insert the affiliate codes into the DOM after page loadāvery convenient and concise, but I felt that was not kosher, because in my view the source/hover should show it.
Sometimes we wonāt use a code for something at Amazon ā say, if I felt the need to link to Mein Kampf, I would not use an amazon referral code because I am not inclined to personally gain from it, even if I know the people clicking it are just going to proceed directly to the dragon dildo section anyway.
But I would totally use it for the Communist Manifesto.
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I checked that one because I got a relatively big check the next period, and it slowly, horribly dawned on me what they must have bought.
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I think there should be a list, anonymized of course, that shows what BB readers buy through its affiliate links. Iāll be sure to make some of my most disturbing purchases through them.
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I expect your essays are finished, double spaced, and written in cursive detailing the points, counterpoints, and primary characters in this novel. I also expect a dissection of motivations and key plot arcs. The essays are due no later than 7:45AM on my desk, and donāt forget to sign your name!
Class dismissed.
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