Affiliate links

[claptomania]

I've noticed recently that a lot of S&B links are affiliate links. For the untechy basically that means that someone is earning a small amount of commission on sales made via that link. So either individual posters are doing that, or Mumsnet is converting links that forum users post to monetise the site. Anyone know which it is?

Thanks for that link Frugal. I'll have to re-read it to get my head round the techy bits but this part sums up how I feel.:

For a short, glorious time, the internet democratized fashion.....But now, with rewardStyle dominating the landscape, locking out any retailer or designer who doesn’t have the money to pay the monthly fee, and rejecting any blogger who dares to not play their big-brand game, we’re seeing the consolidation of fashion back into the boring, mass-produced hands of the big players again. Oh, and your favorite fashion blog is now a snooze to read....

At this rate the internet won't be worth using in 10 year time. The corporates will have sucked the life out of it.

Retailers don't give 3-8% to every blogger who you click through to their website.

It'll either be the most recent one, or the first one within the last 30 days.

Amy thanks for clarifying - I'd actually be a bit disappointed if MN weren't using skimlinks or similar, as it seems like an obvious and non-harmful revenue stream (and less annoying than more ads).

Pintrest have just banned the use of affiliate links.

I am not sure if this is still the case, but a few months back it became apparent that while Pinterest had removed rewardstyle/rstyle.me links from its site, it still allowed shopstyle ones (which lots of bloggers now use instead).

The confusing thing with shopstyle is that lots of people (me!) who are not in their affiliate scheme still use their website to search for clothes, as it's a sort of fashion/home search engine. If I then click through and link to something I found on shopstyle, the link definitely registers this. I'm not earning commission though! Maybe shopstyle do? I don't think I mind that, because their site is so useful.

I agree with jasmine on all her points about bloggers. You can use www.getlinkinfo.com/ to discover where odd-looking links (bit.ly and stuff) actually point.

This has been an eye-opener. Thank you all for your illuminating posts. The article linked above was particularly good.

Thanks all including Mumsnet! Much more clued up now.

I don't agree that ads are less annoying. You know where you are with an advert. There's a straighforward 'please-buy-our-stuff' quality to them that's starting to look almost old fashioned. I think this creeping PR by stealth is far worse.

I think this creeping PR by stealth is far worse.

In blogs certainly. I want to know if content is independent or not.

But if people post links on MN in good faith, and MN adds bits to the links behind-the-scenes so that MN itself gets the money, I am very happy for that to happen.

Well I'd have preferred it if they'd been upfront about what they were doing rather than waiting till they were asked.
With a site like this I think you need complete transparency. Once you lose trust, it's very hard to win it back.

Slightly off topic, I was reading Wearing It Today and wanted to examine their outgoing links. Lots of cryptic bit.ly and tidd.ly shortlinks, on the sidebar and on some posts, some linksynergy.com links. I tried to find a disclosure statement somewhere, am I just dumb.

I don't know - just feeling slightly creeped out. (Checking my cookies now.)

I parsed a few of those bit.ly links on WIT using getlinkinfo.com as suggested by Blair. I found awin, rstyle and linksynergy links underneath, but can't see a disclosure statement.