Amazon affiliate etiquette

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Over at Unclutterer we recently ran a post announcing the impending release of Leopard and how you could get it the cheapest at Amazon. Of course, we get a cut of every sale we generate from our site. I always assume it’s universal knowledge that when blogs link to Amazon, they’re getting an affiliate commission of sales. But invariably there’s a comment chastising us for not being explicit about it. In this case it was from someone named Al who said, “It’s also probably polite to disclose that you’ll be getting a cut from any sales through your ‘pre-order’ link, too.”

I was heartened to see that just about every other commenter came to our defense. That said, however, I notice that others, such as John Gruber in his post about Leopard, make it a point to disclose their cut. So, I’m trying to understand the etiquette here.

Why exactly is it polite to make the disclosure? It’s not as if a reader will pay more because they use our link. They pay exactly the list price; it’s Amazon who pays us the commission. We’re providing a service by highlighting a good deal, and if someone buys, then it obviously was valuable information to them. So what’s the concern?

Oct 19, 2007 | Comments | Tags: , ,

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3 comments posted

  1. Posted by John Gruber - 10/20/2007

    I don’t think it’s a matter of politeness; I tend to mention that I’ll be getting a cut from things like this because I think it might make some readers more likely to do it. So instead of thinking of it as disclosure, it’s more like “Hey, you get a great price *and* help kick a few bucks my way.”

  2. Posted by Appfunds - 10/22/2007

    There are always people who complain. Can you blame your tv channel that you followed their commercial and bought something useless ?

  3. Posted by Jon - 11/11/2007

    As a guy who did the journalism thing for a few years, we always mentioned any way we would possibly benefit from recommending a product (or, wouldn’t recommend something if we would benefit) so people wouldn’t think we were recommending it simply for the money. I think that’s where the expectation stems from. It’s odd in a case like this, because you’re simply saying, “Look! A good deal!” When I was an editor, I would have said no to any benefits from linking. But here, it just seems like snarky commenters…

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