11–20 of 187 posts
I couldn't repeat the link copying trick mentioned in the article. When I right clicked on the link and copied it there was just google.com, no affiliate link. I can see the viglink JavaScript in the source code for the page, though. Yet the dynamic DOM inspector shows that the link href has not been changed, nor is there an onclick handler added. Perhaps it does not work on Safari, or only works for specific users?
I'm not sure if I'm missing something, or doing something wrong, but following the author's directions, none of my links are mangled whatsoever - copying the google.com link simply pasted google.com. I do have Javascript enabled as stated. I tried with each link in the article, and not a single one of them is redirecting via Viglink. (edit) Using Firefox 3.5 on Linux
Pretty neat, I think! Assuming they're not overwriting existing affiliate URLs, then this seems like a reasonable game to play.
In my mind, Posterous is providing free hosting / platform for the blog, so they have at least some claim to having helped make the affiliate sale.
This isn't going nearly as far in bending the rules on affiliate programs as Browsarity (another YC company):
http://www.browsarity.com/about.php
(And good for Browsarity -- but I'm still surprised that various affiliate programs haven't disconnected them yet because of their much more tenuous connection to the underlying transaction.) [EDIT: clarifed this last sentence]
I couldn't repeat the link copying trick mentioned in the article. When I right clicked on the link and copied it there was just google.com, no affiliate link. I can see the viglink JavaScript in the source code for the page, though. Yet the dynamic DOM inspector shows that the link href has not been changed, nor is there an onclick handler added. Perhaps it does not work on Safari, or only works for specific users?
I couldn't repeat the link copying trick mentioned in the article. When I right clicked on the link and copied it there was just google.com, no affiliate link. I can see the viglink JavaScript in the source code for the page, though. Yet the dynamic DOM inspector shows that the link href has not been changed, nor is there an onclick handler added. Perhaps it does not work on Safari, or only works for specific users?
I got the mangled link. Opera 10.52 on Windows XP.
I couldn't repeat the link copying trick mentioned in the article. When I right clicked on the link and copied it there was just google.com, no affiliate link. I can see the viglink JavaScript in the source code for the page, though. Yet the dynamic DOM inspector shows that the link href has not been changed, nor is there an onclick handler added. Perhaps it does not work on Safari, or only works for specific users?
Well, I'm not as torn as the author. They are altering the original content of the author, even if the result is the same. Imagine that someone's religion believes that you go to hell if you use affiliate links... posterous would have condemned them! (dramatizing works)
That's a bit silly, their whole draw is in the fact that they change your content. If you have a youtube link, they turn that into a youtube embed. If you have http://... , they change that into an anchor. There are dozens of examples of content that you can put in an email and they will transform into something more useful, and this is generally regarded as being quite valuable. If you have a problem with posterous…