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 | 3 Comments | Tags: , ,

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