Amazon referral links in posts

September 24, 2004 11:25 AM

Amazon referral links in posts. grabbingsand caught another user linking to Amazon with his own referral code in a post. How do people feel about this? A personal referral code is (IMHO) obnoxious, but what happens when people start slipping in referral codes to political sites? Is there even any way to catch this?

(previously discussed a while back)
posted by mkultra to Etiquette/Policy at 11:25 AM (25 comments total)

That's kind of wacky, but I removed the code. Worse still is when someone does it on the front page of the site.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:08 PM on September 24, 2004

I think it should be considered a self-link. It's not linking to self-created content, but it's linking to a self-rewarding moneygrub. The underlying principle is the same: keep your own Interests out of here.
posted by scarabic at 12:28 PM on September 24, 2004

Honestly, I figured that the link was simply right-click copied from their own site. No harm in the mistake, but a referral link in a thread is like self-linking in an FPP. It is using MeFi for self-promotion.

I think it comes down to degrees. A while back, I linked to a BoingBoing post from my own weblog. It was about the Celestial Homework, remember? My subsequent post was a plan for my own reading with a list of some of the mentioned books. Since it was on my own weblog, I used my Amazon referral tags. In the MeFi discussion of the Homework, I linked that very post. This led to a discussion with digaman -- the compiler of the Celestial Homework -- about the validity of doing so.

My thinking is this ... had I included a link from the MeFi thread directly to Amazon with my referral tag, that would've been taking advantage of the popularity of MeFi for personal gain. But since I linked to my own site, an interested party would have to not only click on my link, but then click again to get to Amazon.

(And for what it is worth, I didn't make a penny.)
posted by grabbingsand at 12:50 PM on September 24, 2004

Yeah, the whole self-linking thing is annoying, but I'm more interested in more nefarious potential abuses. Say, hypothetically, that FreeRepublic (or Planned Parenthood, or whomever) has an affiliate program- they probably don't, but bear with me. People start linking to Amazon using their referral ID. Next thing you know, MeFites are throwing money at FreeRep without even knowing it. Given the general leaning of this site, people's reactions would range from annoyed to possibly litigious.

It's bound to happen, if it hasn't already, if not here, than somewhere.
posted by mkultra at 1:29 PM on September 24, 2004

Assuming, of course, the linker knows that code is there and further, knows how to remove it. ;-P
posted by mischief at 1:32 PM on September 24, 2004

Er, is this really a no-no? I figure, the guy's teling you about the book (or whatever), he deserves a kickback. It's not as if you're paying any more for the item; letting Amazon keep the commission instead of giving it to the guy who hooked you up just seems mean. Assuming the link is relevant, why do you care that Amazon gives him a buck or two?

I suppose this could lead to people posting more Amazon links than they otherwise would just so they could put in their referral code, but I haven't seen this as a major problem so far in any community forum. The amount of money at stake is at most a couple of bucks anyway; nobody will risk pissing off the community with a link that's not germane to the discussion at hand for pocket change.

The affinity links for various causes are trickier, I agree, but again, you're not paying any more for the book and it's not as though your favorite bogeyman organization would be a force to be reckoned with if only they had five more dollars.

(Disclaimer: I have in the past included my referral code in a few Amazon links I've posted in MeFi and AskMe threads. I'll stop, of course, if it's truly deemed harmful. Just as a point of reference, it typically takes me 2-3 quarters to reach the $10 threshold where they'll send you a gift certificate, and that includes referral links I post on my blog as well as here.)
posted by kindall at 2:29 PM on September 24, 2004

When I saw this post (the MeTa post) earlier today, kindall, I followed a similar line of reasoning that you did. But then I followed it a little further along. Too much potential for abuse. It's distorting, it puts the good-faith of the posting of every Amazon link (or similar) into question. I almost always post an Amazon link to a book I mention in a comment—I do it to be helpful. For reference, or if someone wants to buy the book. Having a vested interest in someone buying the book, no matter how small, is another matter entirely.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 3:43 PM on September 24, 2004

It's distorting, it puts the good-faith of the posting of every Amazon link (or similar) into question.

I guess, if you want it to. That's entirely up to you. Maybe the answer is not to call the good faith of the posting of every Amazon link into question, rather than telling other people not to post Amazon links.
posted by kindall at 3:59 PM on September 24, 2004

I think maybe the answer is that people don't use MetaFilter for their own direct monetary gain, no matter how small.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:03 PM on September 24, 2004

I'm curious...do the referrals automatically get linked if you happened to be browsing the site while being logged in, or do you purposefully have to "refer" the book, a link pops up, and you type that into a comment or post?
posted by BlueTrain at 4:08 PM on September 24, 2004

the way amazon referrer links work is that you click on them, and when you buy, amazon gives the referrer a percentage of your purchase. Even if you don't buy immediately, the referrer cookie remains for 3 days, and provided you don't click on someone else's, the original referrer gains from your purchases.

And for what its worth, I see nothing wrong with including referrer links. I am in agreement with kindall... since it adds nothing to the end user costs, I don't see the harm in it.
posted by crunchland at 4:17 PM on September 24, 2004

What if all Amazon links made in MeFi posts were automatically tagged with MeFi's referrer code?
posted by rajbot at 4:21 PM on September 24, 2004

I think maybe the answer is that people don't use MetaFilter for their own direct monetary gain, no matter how small.

Instead, they should use it for Amazon's direct monetaray gain. Better that Jeff Bezos gets the money than someone you actually know. Okay, glad we've cleared that up!

What if all Amazon links made in MeFi posts were automatically tagged with MeFi's referrer code?

This is actually more difficult than you'd think, because there are a lot of different formats of Amazon URLs that work. The last element in a path is the referral code, if there is a referral code, but there's no easy way for a computer to tell whether the last element in the path is a referral code just by looking at it (it could just be a URL without a referral code). Amazon can tell, of course, but that's because they parse out the whole URL.
posted by kindall at 4:31 PM on September 24, 2004

Ethereal Bligh's point is a good one if the original poster links to a major book, or upcoming popular text, like Clinton's book, the Da Vinci Code, or some other bestseller. Any independent publication seems fine though.

Meh, throw me in the "who gives a shit" category.
posted by BlueTrain at 4:46 PM on September 24, 2004

Er, is this really a no-no? I figure, the guy's teling you about the book (or whatever), he deserves a kickback.

Hey kindall - you wanna hear about how to GET A FREE IPOD?
posted by scarabic at 5:16 PM on September 24, 2004

No, thanks, I already have one. Thanks for illustrating the difference between being helpful and being an annoying prick, though. So we are agreed that being an annoying prick is a bad thing?
posted by kindall at 7:57 PM on September 24, 2004

Geez. That was a joke. Sorry, Kindall.
posted by scarabic at 9:04 PM on September 24, 2004

Of course it was a joke. You were intentionally bringing up something unrelated to show how it shouldn't be done. I didn't say you were an annoying prick, you were merely illustrating what one would be like. Sorry, didn't mean to come off quite so snippy. Low blood sugar, perhaps.
posted by kindall at 11:35 PM on September 24, 2004

I was only trying to play with you because I like you.

*sniff*

You've spent some time on how referral links might be more legitimately applied. My crack was a worst case scenario. Obviously, there are several judgement calls one could make in-between. It looks like Matt made one in this case, anyway.
posted by scarabic at 12:36 AM on September 25, 2004

I wish people would just not link to Amazon. It's just a freaking shopping mall, after all.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:08 AM on September 25, 2004

I wish people would just not link to Amazon. It's just a freaking shopping mall, after all.

Yeah, a shopping mall that has little placards attached to each item telling you everything about it. It is the Internet's de facto source of authoritative information about books, music, and to a lesser extent, movies (IMDB really is the best source here, but Amazon owns them). But, um, shopping is bad!
posted by kindall at 11:19 AM on September 25, 2004

shopping is bad!

Reminds me of the time I walked over to Cody's Books on Telegraph and bought a copy of Fruits, then was called a consumer whore out on the street by some fat hippie with a microphone.

[points at me and my friend] "...like these folks here who drove their SUV out from Danville or wherever to do their shopping - they don't want anyone to interrupt their consumption craze with talk about what's really going on in the world!"

And people ask me why I love Berkeley!
posted by scarabic at 1:32 PM on September 25, 2004

Let people do it. Sure, if it gets out of hand, then step down on it, but all that's happening is a couple of people will make a couple of dollars that would instead have gone to Amazon. There was a great link on the blue recently with some much needed Amazon links to books about fairy tales. I'd have been happy for those people to have recieved a couple of cents off me.
posted by seanyboy at 3:10 PM on September 26, 2004

That was me. (Or one of those links was mine.) Still want the person responsible to make a few cents? :)

I link to Amazon books for the convenience of others. I'm not completely comfortable with the commercial nature of the link, but as is said above, it's the best overall resource for linking to a book. Not a movie—and I preferentially use IMDB for movie and DVD links. I'd use the equivalent for books if there were one. I assume that people will a) get info on the book, which is the main point; b) buy the book from Amazon if they're comfortable with Amazon; or, c) make a note of the info and get it elsewhere. I'm not particularly interested in sending business Amazon's way (although I personally like Amazon a lot), it's not at all the reason I link to them. So I don't want the few cents, and the whole idea makes me uncomfortable. I don't want my book recommendations tainted by this possible ulterior motive.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:08 PM on September 26, 2004

whenever I've done such a link, it's been to present something for the sake of presenting it. I haven't gone out of my way to push a book or game or whatever. the amazon referrals are just icing on the cake.
posted by crunchland at 7:15 PM on September 26, 2004