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Ask HN: Do you trust review sites/blog posts with affiliate links? Could you?

2 points by mthoms ↗ HN
Do you generally (trust|distrust|avoid) online reviews if they contain affiliate links to the products being reviewed?

Let's imagine a site dedicated to reviewing all the offerings in a specific niche. We'll assume the site has no ads, a pleasing no-nonsense design and is entirely transparent about its monetization strategy. Is it even possible for site like this to exist and still be considered trustworthy in your eyes?

When I visit sites that monetize in this manner, the conflict I see is that some products have lucrative affiliate programs while others have none. Obviously, this creates an incentive for the site to favour certain products over others.

5 comments

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oblib
I don't trust most of them and this is because when I've contacted some of those that are top ranked by Google they tell me how much I have to pay to get a top ranking on their site.

And they're not shy or even evasive about it. They are very matter of fact about it.

mthoms
I'm curious, is this in the context of asking them to perform an actual written review of your product or were you just inquiring about sponsored links/ads/mentions/etc?
oblib
This was about asking them to review the product. I was left smh after contacting a few of them.

I spent a bit of time ranking sites for Google. The training and process provided didn't allow much time to rank a site, so I get why those sites might have a high ranking.

After I'd talked to a few sales reps for those sites I went back and spent a bit more time with them and as I recall they all stated that the "rankings" were advertisements. It wasn't really "buried", but wasn't highlighted either.

FWIW, it was a invoicing app I was looking to have reviewed.

enonevets
I don’t trust dedicated review sites or comparison sites because they’re built pretty much as a monetization vehicle. In the same vein I dislike products, services, or sites that do something similar but in reality is just a big amazon referral source in disguise.

Outside of this, I generally don’t have a problem with people using affiliate links as a way to monetize something they’d talk about anyway.

captn3m0
I trust those that have a clear ethics policy, such as WiredCutter which is run by NYC and maintains a firewall between the reviewers and their sales/affiliate teams.