This has been a funny week or so for the ‘Travel Blogger’ world. We had another occurrence of the revenue discussion appear when Drew from Travel is Free mentioned ‘selling out’. Travel Blogger Buzz went on to explore things further on this topic, and conversations got a bit heated in the comments. The problem, again, is affiliate links.
I wasn’t going to chime in on this as a post, because there is enough drama already out there, but yesterday I saw a great post by my esteemed colleague Joe from asthejoeflies talking about 0% cards. Here’s the post. In it, Joe discusses 7 credit cards. The final one being the DiscoverIT card. What you (and perhaps Joe) doesn’t realize is that he has an affiliate link for that DiscoverIT card. He could have smoothly slipped it into the post, especially with it being the final one under discussion. That was a layup post.
I did think to give him a nudge and say ‘hey – you DO know you could have slipped the link in there right? But then I thought further, hence this post. What would have happened if the final link in that post had been an Affiliate link? Would the savvy reader spot this, and would they then devalue the entire post as an attempt to make money? If the link paid a commission, what really changed?
If you go to read the extensive comments over on the Travel is Free post you will see a consistent message by Drew: “Judge me on my content.” Would the content of Joe’s post have changed if the hyperlink had contained tracking codes that kicked back a payment?
PS – here is my link to the DiscoverIT card it’s a great 0% card, you can see Joe’s review to confirm that
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