Would Affiliate Links be a Good way for the Forum to Make Money?

[Windroid]

Would affiliate links be a good way for the forum to make money? For example, say the word "AdGuard" appears in a post. That could automatically turn into a link to the AdGuard website, via the forum's affiliate link (I've included my own affiliate link to show what this would look like). That would both make money for the forum, and give readers an easy way to the website of what's being referred to (AdGuard in this case).

 

[ocnbrze]

i don't know if this is a good idea. it would probably piss me off. it would seem way too spammy for me. my mom had an adware on her computer. i went on it one time and went to go onto some forums....anything i type i would get a link to an advertisement about a certain product. i finally was able to get that scrubbed clean, but it was super annoying.

 

[Windroid]

i don't know if this is a good idea. it would probably piss me off. it would seem way too spammy for me. my mom had an adware on her computer. i went on it one time and went to go onto some forums....anything i type i would get a link to an advertisement about a certain product. i finally was able to get that scrubbed clean, but it was super annoying.

I turned off my ad-blocker on this site, that was spammy! The ads on this forum are just worthless junk that gets in the way. A link to the official site of the app being discussed (or something) is useful to the reader. In other words: There's a difference between spammy junk and useful links.

To be clear: I'm not talking about a box that pops-up when you hover over the word. I'm talking about a link to a website, plain and simple.

 

[Hadron]

I've mainly dealt with affiliate links on subject-specific sites, e.g. links to vendors on photography sites. Of course I ignore them (they usually refer to sites on the wrong continent, and never to the sites I would use, so aren't relevant). Occasionally I click through in case that is worth something to the site, but never go further.

I see what you are suggesting. As a member I worry about inserting links into posts, as that would look like I inserted them. But then I don't see the ads myself (I never found them useful, but don't find targeted ads useful either:I think that's just a fiction used by ad vendors to sell ads and to justify dodgy practices, in reality conning everyone). I'd probably find keyword links less problematic apart from the issue of making clear that it was the site rather than the member who inserted them.

But at the end of the day this is @Rob's site, so decisions on such things are his call.

 

[Windroid]

@Rob If inserting links into member's posts is a step too far, we could simply have a page on this website with affiliate links.

 

[Rob]

This is great idea (thanks!), but also could be confusing...

If a user sees the word "Samsung" and it has a link, would you expect it to link to Samsung.com using an affiliate link, or Samsung content on the forum? If too many words are affiliated into links it could appear very spammy very quickly. With some balance this could definitely work but I wonder where the line should be drawn.

You may notice the "Best Tech" section is now using some neat branded affiliate links like this:

https://deals.earlybird.club/samsung

So our aff links go through a "deals" subdomain now. I definitely want to build affiliate links back into the forum. Just need to figure out the best and most balanced way. Overdoing it could also kill SEO.

 

[Windroid]

Overdoing it could also kill SEO.

Hold up! I've put some of my own affiliate links into my posts. Would that harm this site's search-engine optimization?