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Comment by gamblor956 | Hacker News Reader

They don't steal affiliate commissions.

They capture the most valuable sales--i.e., those made with the immediate intent to purchase--and direct those purchasers to the cheapest site in exchange for a commission.

It comes down to a question of what is more valuable to the seller. The blogger may have created the intent to purchase the product but Honey created the intent to purchase from the specific seller. And to the seller, that is far more valuable, especially as a lot of Honey-generated sales may have been sales that would have otherwise gone to competitors.

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AFAIK, Honey doesn’t make you got to a specific seller.

They insert themselves on the cart page which is the final step of the purchase funnel when the product, the seller and the purchase has already been decided.

If Honey is inserting themselves between the blogger and the seller and then pocketing the commission, how is this not “stealing/hijacking” the commission?

I have no special knowledge about Honey, but I think the distinction being made is that Honey redirects them to a _new_ seller that offers a cheaper price, essentially poaching the customer. The blog's affiliate never makes a sale in the first place so of course it never pays out.

For the blog, the outcome is the same as if you took the time to price shop manually and ended up picking a different retailer. Honey's just automating that process.

> the distinction being made is that Honey redirects them to a _new_ seller that offers a cheaper price, essentially poaching the customer. The blog's affiliate never makes a sale in the first place so of course it never pays out.

Based on what you surmised, Honey essentially acts as a middle man between two businesses. Did I get that right or am I missing something here?

No, that's not correct. You can get rewards from the page you're already on, whether it's the cheapest or not. You're not redirected and you're not incentivised to switch the retailer.

I'm getting their points from doing online grocery order directly from the supermarket site for example.

But is that superceding another site's affiliate link, or did you just go straight to the website yourself?

I'm going directly to the website.

How do they (Honey) know, though?

It's a browser extension.

Ok, I get how they do technically, but how the shops let honey insert they affiliate id and take a cut when the user has come directly from a newsletter?

Honey isn't inserting themselves between the blogger and the seller automatically. The user is doing that when they use the Honey add-on after visiting the blogger's website.

This is no different then a user visiting a different website about the same product and clicking through the affiliate link on that new blogger's page before making the purchase.

What percent of the time does “using the honey add on” result in selecting a different vendor? That is, if you read a blog post and get linked to an Amazon page, does honey not try to capture a commission there? What if you open the add on to compare prices but still end up purchasing from Amazon?

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I don’t use honey so don’t know the mechanics of how it works.

Do you work for them? It sounds like you work for them. Based on your description, the crux of it is they exactly do insert themselves between a blog / affiliate link and their incentivization towards a specific seller exactly does replace whatever commission the blog would have seen

Agreed. The parent is coming across as obtuse to the point where I wonder if it's intentional.

It sounds a lot like the two of you work for one of Honey's competitors. You both are coming across as obtuse to the point where I wonder if it's intentional.

Oh wait, you say you're just a guy on the internet and you don't work for anyone in the industry? Yeah, pal, same here. The difference is that I base my comments on having used Honey as a customer, not on some random comment based on a random comment by someone who hasn't actually used the product we're all talking about it.

It's fine if you guys want talk out of your rears but at least be honest about what you're doing.

I don't work for them, nor do I know any of their employees.

However, I have used their add-on and it does not work the way you described.

> ”and direct those purchasers to the cheapest site in exchange for a commission.”

This is incorrect. Honey does not redirect you to different/cheaper retailers.

Honey is a browser plugin which applies coupon codes (scraped from the web) to reduce the cost of the purchase from the retailer at the checkout phase.

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