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Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

If you still want to buy from Amazon, I often use diskprices.com (no affiliation, just a user) to sort disks on Amazon by price-per-GB.

For example, here are USB flash drives sorted by price-per-GB: https://diskprices.com/?locale=us&condition=new&disk_types=u...

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While also affiliate, I prefer https://usb.userbenchmark.com, where you can also see ratings for performance and durability and a VALUE (price/quality)

I hate having a cheap, big usb drive that is slow as hell and breaks after 6 months.

Unfortunately, even the good rated ones are not always the same product. Recently I bought 2 Sandisk Ultra Flair USB3 (best price point / quality by far) and they both broke after 3 days of use - after looking it up it was revision 3.2 or something. Older revisions in my pocket still work very fast and reliable.

I would pay for a service that does HONEST reviews without affiliation :-)

This is what LTT Labs from Linus Tech Tips is trying to do, they're in initial set up stages but moving impressively fast, and I'm super excited for it.

While it's a mildly useful site, all diskprices' links are affiliate links, and I've not found an opt-out.

I don't think we should share that stuff here on HN, it's a cancer on the web.

You don't think someone providing a free service should receive compensation? I would gladly give them their cut for a useful service. This isn't some shady website writing bogus blogposts or best of listicles.

Absolutely not! That would be an oxymoron. Someone providing a service is entitled to seek compensation; the amount and means of compensation should be listed clearly next to the service. But it ain't free.

Would you have paid to read these reviews in the first place?

> You don't think someone providing a free service should receive compensation?

It's an LLC not a charity.

How about they follow the (GDPR and affiliate marketing and opt-in) rules like everyone else has to?

GPDR is about private data, how does a static affiliate link breaches private data?

Would you rather they make money on ads instead?

Affiliate links cost me nothing and if it keeps the site in business I am more than happy for them to take a few cents from Amazon.

Agreed. Super clever little niche they found.

Why is it cancer? I don't see them spamming their affiliate links anywhere. They're providing a useful service and in return they get a commission from Amazon, it's not like I'm paying the extra from my own pocket

Disagreed. diskprices.com is a well known and invaluable resource in direct contrast to the "Best hard drives of 2022" affiliate spam that'll show up if you search for a website that does what they do.

Affiliate links are indeed cancer, but that battle was lost years ago. Even reputable reviewers use affiliate links today.

Reputable reviewers were the target for the invention of affiliate links. It's hard to remember that there is any use except spam.

PCPartPicker also uses affiliate links and it's probably the single most useful site I use.

Affiliate programs are one of the few win-win monetization strategies online. Sure, it gets abused by blogspam. I don't want to minimize that abuse because it does suck. But when you look at the good affiliates, someone who truly offers valuable advice that can help you find what you need to buy, and gets a few pennies for it... is that not exactly the type of paid content that we want from the internet?

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