Heated Debate – Affiliate Link Disclosure in Social Media
Are Affiliate Links Unethical Without Disclosure?
Social media is about trust and building relationships. Some bloggers feel in order to be ‘trustworthy’ they should disclose when they are using affiliate links. I say it’s just silly to put (aff) or some other disclosure after affiliate links. If you are using affiliate links tastefully and sparingly in your blog posts or Twitter and only recommending appropriate products your readers may find interesting or useful, then you should not have to disclose every time you drop a link.
Lisa Barone, one of the outspoken women at OutspokenMedia agrees!
A heated debate follows in the blog comments over there.
Are Affiliate Links Unethical Without Disclosure?
“My thoughts? If you don’t trust me, then you can unfollow me and unsubscribe right now. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
If you don’t trust me not to throw BS in your face, then what are we doing? I don’t want you clicking on my link. Whether it’s clean or affiliate, it doesn’t matter. I value real relationships and if you’re questioning my intentions then we’ve already failed as a couple. Stop wasting your time on me and go find someone you do trust. Because that’s the point of this whole “social” thing.”
There are 105 comments over at the OutspokenMedia blog, which proves this is still a hot topic with lots of conflicting opinions.
WHAT DO YOU THINK???
BTW the 5 Star blog is DoFollow now. 
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#1 UpTwoBucks wrote on Monday, May 18th, 2009:
I agree. What does it really matter that you want to post affiliate links, advertising links, or any link. If it is not of interest to you, then the answer is simple…Don’t Click it!
#2 Ghazal Alvi wrote on Monday, May 18th, 2009:
Nice post Linda!
In my opinion, if you’re providing value through your blog posts, then your readers are already benefited from your knowledge and they trust you as an expert.
So, if you’re going to put affiliate links in your posts, they’re more likely to click on that link and there is no need to let them know beforehand that it’s an affiliate link.
#3 Linda Buquet wrote on Monday, May 18th, 2009:
I agree with both of you! If it’s not of interest, don’t click. If it is of interest then why would you care if the blog you are reading, that the blogger took the time to write for you – profits? I would feel good about it if I bought something knowing the blogger made a commission.
BUT I’m in the industry, so it’s a little different and I am biased. That blog that the quote post was on, is read by many SEO and non-affiliate types – some of whom are pretty anti-affiliate marketing to begin with. So some of them see things differently than we do.
#4 Margot-Helena wrote on Monday, May 18th, 2009:
Hi Linda,
a truly excellent post.
Internet marketing is all about relationships. And relationships are based on trust, otherwise they will not work.
About Twitter though – you can’t always post your affiliate links as they are. I’ve noticed that Twitter dislikes long and ugly affiliate links and turns them into short url-s itself – even if you tweet the original affiliate url.
Apart from that – I always promote what I believe in. If it doesn’t work for me, I don’t promote it either. And my list knows I promote the products I like. If I promoted crap, they would unsubcribe quicker than it takes me to write this comment. But with my list I have another issue with the links. Namely, I like to follow my open and click stats. And for that getresponse turns all my links into their ugly tracking links. So it doesn’t matter whether I put an affiliate link, a link to my website or blog, they all look the same ugly row of characters. But that’s a completely different issue, sorry for wandering off topic.
Keep up the good work!
Greetings from Estonia,
Margot-Helena
#5 The Affiliate Link Disclosure Manifesto | Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins wrote on Monday, May 18th, 2009:
[...] then Linda Buquet and Adotas joined the fray this week with their takes on affiliate link [...]
#6 PB wrote on Monday, May 18th, 2009:
I agree. What does it really matter that you want to post affiliate links, advertising links, or any link. If it is not of interest to you, then the answer is simple…Don’t Click it!
#7 Phil Barnhart wrote on Monday, May 18th, 2009:
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” microformat”).
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!
#8 GPT Sites wrote on Monday, May 18th, 2009:
I totally agree, yet people still consider it spamming; it is as if any kind of link is spam, until proven clean.
I hate what trashy advertisers have done to the internet.