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Forum auto amazon affiliate link disclosure

Syntaxvgm
By Syntaxvgm
in Forum Bugs and Issues
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Go to solution Solved by colonel_mortis,
35 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

If somebody recommends something and if you wanted to then you could let the person choose to keep their affiliate link or use LTT's one. This rule seems forceful and there's no apparent reason why the user shouldn't be able to choose to have it automatically changed or allow other affiliate links.

 

And now I've come to the realization that I can no longer in good conscious post links to products on Amazon even if they never contained any affiliate links in the first place.

 

Also, I'm fairly sure if Amazon fully understood what was going on here then they'd disapprove.

We aren't the only site to do this - sites like overclock.net do the same. It is, and has for a long time been, that all affiliate and referral links aside from those belonging to LMG are banned. The introduction of this feature did not change that policy, it just means that we no longer remove links or posts for containing amazon affiliate codes.

 

Aside from a clear disclosure in the Terms of Service, which will be added in due course (but because it's a legal document I can't just add it), this is the idea of the Amazon affiliate programme - to give sites a small kickback for driving traffic & sales to Amazon.

 

It doesn't affect you in any way (the price is still the same regardless of how you get there), so it is an unintrusive way for LMG to slightly offset the significant operating costs of this site. If you want to stop posting links to Amazon products, you of course can, but I am unable to understand what difference the affiliate tag makes to you, or any other member of the forum. I accept that, per the programme's terms it should be transparently disclosed, and that will be done now that it has been brought to our attention, but I don't think that would have influenced anyone's behaviour.

Posted
4 minutes ago, shadowbyte said:

whoa, that's sketchy 

It's not, this is LTT's forum, all traffic driven to Amazon from it gives LTT a kickback, that's how referral programs work.

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Just now, Ryan_Vickers said:

It's not, this is LTT's forum, all traffic driven to Amazon from it gives LTT a kickback, that's how referral programs work.

it should be disclosed

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Just now, shadowbyte said:

it should be disclosed

Yes, and they're working on that.  Hopefully it will be done soon

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