Thoughts on Commercial Affiliates
from the thinking-outloud dept
So, I'm not exactly sure why, but over the past few months I've been receiving more and more requests to do various "affiliations" with commercial sites. Being a business guy I have nothing against commercialism, but my idea for Techdirt was that it was to remain a somewhat "neutral site". However, with all the requests coming in, I'm wondering if I'm just being stubborn. I figured I'd post this publicly and see if anyone reading the site (since you folks are the ones who matter anyway) had any thoughts on the matter. Feel free to comment below or to send it to me as feedback.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
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commercial techdirt
There must be a direct distinction between commentary and advertising. Without that, techdirt woudl be selling out.
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Re: commercial techdirt
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Re: commercial techdirt
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Your call
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Commercial links on techdirt?
1.) The bad thing about paid links, affiliated sites etc. is that they are not neccessarily the sites you would recommend without the sponsorship. Your principle should always be (and I believe in the long run this pays most) to send your visitors to the BEST sites, to the sites you would recommend personally - independently whether they pay you or not. The neutral nature of techdirt is for sure some of its biggest values.
2.) However, if you want to enter paid and affiliate relationship with other sites I would clearly state this and have those links completly separated from the other content, maybe a box of
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linking or banners?
If it's linking, go for it.
I've found running a news site
is hard when one avoids banners
or advertising but I continue to
do it.
How about a links page or something
similar, seperate from the main page
for sponsors, affiliates, and other
worthy sites?
you could even use small to medium
banners there. An example would be
fucker.com's
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Re: linking or banners?
funnel of fuckers:
http://www.fucker.com/fuckers/we_love/index.html
or glassdog.com's "advert" or glassdog.net
-Zebulun
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