"How DARE you make money from this thorough, thoughtful, and well-researched post at no cost to me?!"
I just never understand people's hatred for affiliate links in good pieces of content.
I just never understand people's hatred for affiliate links in good pieces of content.
I'd actually like an answer. I have no problem with the affiliate links at all (though the listicle-like gallery presentation is awkward on mobile), and would legitimately like to know if there are any real-world examples of affiliate links making money when targeting a specific community. I had affiliate links all over (organically, not in ad form) when I ran a popular SharePoint community, and I think I made ~$300 total in the year I had the links active. HN "feels" like a larger community than my old SharePoint community was, so the answer to My GP's query is interesting from an academic sense.
[2] https://gigaom.com/2013/02/14/the-brainpickings-brouhaha-and...
1) sure, there was effort put into this and it likely wouldn't have been made w/out affiliate links, so clearly there's value provided.
2) it's pretty clear that a list like this is going to underrepresent books where an amazon link is less likely --- superior free alternatives to the books listed in some cases. Using affiliate links (and, as far as I can tell, only undisclosed affiliate links) suggests that getting an accurate "top 30" wasn't the highest priority.
So the affiliate links are a signal of intent, and intent affects accuracy in this case. But the list wouldn't have been written otherwise.
"You've figured out a way to post native content advertising to Hacker News" would be the equally uncharitable counterpoint to your mock quote.
But the list was explicitly generated from Amazon links... wasn't that always going to be the case?
Tagging the links was a conscious decision, but I do think that the approach of looking for Amazon links provides more insight than any other domain/online store.
It's not super clear from the website whether this is something you did primarily to learn about data analysis, learn about HN's book recommendations, or to make money. Any of those is fine! But the motivation is likely to influence the outcome (even unintentionally) and it's something that could be made more clear.
EDIT: This is not the case with the posted article: see clarification below.
Personally I thought this was an awesome use of the dataset and introduced me to some new books I hadn't considered.
In this case, yes, the content is good and the intent was not to drive visits to Amazon. (in contrast with a hypothetical post like "Top 10 Books You Should Buy To Be Smart According To The Nerds at Hacker News.") Sites/Medium posts have been trending toward the latter model of revenue generation in the face of declining ad revenue.
"How dare you build a side project and attempt to offset the costs of hosting and a domain?"