Affiliate Marketing is something that I have been considering to try for sometime. It also has been a notion that has given me some discomfort because of the cynic in me. Somehow, I just cannot seem to believe that anyone could be impartial if being partial could reap monetary rewards.Buried in the above thought is the assumption that the blogger would just review books regularly and positively not so much as a recommendation but a sale pitch. In such a scenario, I believe the blogger is not building the reader’s trust in him or worse abusing that trust.
I believe that trust can be built if the blogger is judicious about the frequency of his reviews and the nature of the reviews (i.e. honest reviews and offering a balanced mix of positive and negative points).
So, should I explicitly inform a reader each time I recommend a book that I am also involved with affiliate marketing? I believe it is unnecessary. However, I believe it is necessary to be upfront about engaging in affiliate marketing. And the
way one can do this is by putting a badge on the sidebar which I have done.
Will it be enough? Some might argue that doing so is not enough because the reader may not see the badge. So how to inform the reader that if he or she purchases a book from Amazon after clicking a link on my site, I will get some referral fees.
One could possibly say that all these musings is really much ado about nothing considering that most web users are probably savvy enough to know that a fair number of sites do engage in some sort of affiliate marketing in one form or another. I guess this is about my own peace of mind.
I do not want any readers of this blog to discover later on that I have engaged in affiliate marketing and be suspicious of my views. I rather the readers know about my intent, be initially wary of my writings and earn their trust in the long run then lose the trust later on when their assumptions about the site defer from reality.
In a way, maybe I am superimposing my own decision making process to validate a site’s opinions on others.
Oh well… I guess all these thoughts are coming up in the wake of the supposed Microsoft ’scandal’. Is there a moral difference between receiving the laptop, disclosing you received it, review it and talking about a book you read, maybe recommending it (since not all books you read are worth recommending), provide a link to amazon where you get a referral fee if the book gets sold.
Should the amount in question make a difference?
The world is grey today.
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