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Inside a viral website

notfunatparties.substack.com

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Re: Inside a viral website

#3

Post by tomjohnneill »

dx034 wrote: post #2

Interestingly, according to [1] there were only ~11k visitors from Hackernews for a post on the front page that had ~1k comments. I would've estimated the visitor/comment ratio to be much, much higher. [1] https://simpleanalytics.com/istheshipstillstuck.com?utm_sour...

I only put simple analytics on the site the day after it was at the top of Hacker News (unfortunately)

Re: Inside a viral website

#4

Post by oefrha »

> These reports aren’t just limited to the products you recommend — if someone buys anything within a 24 hour period of clicking your link, you can see, and you get commission.

Anyone else find this a pretty gross violation of privacy on Amazon’s part? Why should your unrelated purchases be disclosed to affiliates just because you clicked an affiliate link for whatever reason? Let’s say the affiliate website use accounts or know the identities of users through another channel, and track outbound clicks. With few enough clicks, they can exactly correlate your unrelated purchases with you, if I understand this correctly. In fact it seems you can easily prank unsuspecting acquaintances this way.

To be clear, I have no problem with affiliates getting commission on random stuff.

Edit: I can also see why the data could be valuable to marketers.

Re: Inside a viral website

#7

Post by artembugara »

oefrha wrote: post #4

> These reports aren’t just limited to the products you recommend — if someone buys anything within a 24 hour period of clicking your link, you can see, and you get commission. Anyone else find this a pretty gross violation of privacy on Amazon’s part? Why should your unrelated purchases be disclosed to affiliates just because you clicked an affiliate link for whatever reason? Let’s say the affiliate website use acco…

I think it's simply because you do forward someone on a website.

Also, imagine it's not Amazon but a much smaller website. Just bringing a client (someone who actually paid) is already a good deal.

So, I believe it's a totally fair commission rule.

Re: Inside a viral website

#8

Post by tomjohnneill »

artembugara wrote: post #6

Neat. Could anyone give me some ideas how else the author could monetize this without normal ads? Also, what would be the gain if he did normal ads?

So I did in the end apply to Google AdSense just to find out. Turns out the site didn't get approved because it didn't have enough content on it. So I think you would be hard pushed to monetise it quickly by going down the normal display ads route.

I didn't mention in the post, but I had a couple of random ad offers, but they were for things that I didn't really agree with so didn't take up any of the offers.

Re: Inside a viral website

#10

Post by oefrha »

artembugara wrote: post #7
oefrha wrote: post #4

> These reports aren’t just limited to the products you recommend — if someone buys anything within a 24 hour period of clicking your link, you can see, and you get commission. Anyone else find this a pretty gross violation of privacy on Amazon’s part? Why should your unrelated purchases be disclosed to affiliates just because you clicked an affiliate link for whatever reason? Let’s say the affiliate website use acco…

I think it's simply because you do forward someone on a website. Also, imagine it's not Amazon but a much smaller website. Just bringing a client (someone who actually paid) is already a good deal. So, I believe it's a totally fair commission rule.

I made it very clear that I have no problem with the commission paid:

> To be clear, I have no problem with affiliates getting commission on random stuff.

The problem is disclosing random purchases. You can pay a commission without that disclosure.

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