I see cloaked links all the time. I think if you believe you don’t need to disclose links because you need to base your interaction on trust, then there should be no reason to put work into hiding links, which I feel is manipulating your content.

It is the equivalent of ladies night at the clubs. Yes, everyone is having fun. So why is it that club promoters go out of their way to attract females?

My point is, I don’t think anyone should disclose all their links, but THEY SHOULD leave them naked so that the user can decide their trust of your content for themselves.

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!

Just a little humor here. It’s a choice we make to click on an affiliate link or NOT. Just as it’s a choice to click on a posted blog post or NOT. The twitterers of the world for the most part are not out to get people.

Have I used affiliate links in tweets? Yes. Have I used affiliate links in blogs? Yes.

Do I twist somebody’s arm to click on them? No. I like to think that most twitterers are conscious, breathing, and for the most part ethical folks who either have reviewed a great product. Now, that it not to say that there are folks out there who are just spamming folks with affiliate links for every Tom (read Eban), Dick (read Kern), and Harry (read Ed) guru out there. :-)

People, you still have a choice…to click OR not to click. To unfollow or follow that is the question!

My view is that most of us try to earn a living from the internet, and affiliate marketing is a very fair way to do this, more so than traditional banner advertising, as its very traceable and measurable for merchants, and doesn’t fill a website with too much advertising. This view that people shouldn’t make money from their work creating a website seems a little naive.

The answer – in my opinion – is to embrace commercialism in a way that doesn’t compromise the quality of the content. If the quality is compromised, you lose your users, so there is an incentive to stay high quality. If you monetise that content using affiliate marketing, I have no problem with it at all, as if I don’t like it, I just don’t buy the product. Unless a site is a charity, I am always going to assume there is a commercial push behind a product recommendation, but that doesn’t mean the quality of the content is bad. If anything, I am willing to reward the site for the referral and buy the recommended item.

Sites have to make money, and its harder to do so with traditional advertising. Lets focus on the quality of the content rather than on what they do to make money. There is always a little feeling of ’sigh’ when you know something is an advertisement: I hate ads on TV and its frustrating to have so many ads in newspapers… but it is what keeps the content I like affordable.

Mike