Welcome to the inaugural post on the AffiliatesForCharity blog. Who am I, how’d I get here, what mistakes did I make along the way, and where is AffiliatesForCharity headed? My name is Kurt Milam, and this is how it all started.
Mea Culpa
In my many years on the Internet, I’ve probably posted fewer than 10 affiliate links that would generate commissions for me. But 10 is more than 0, and I want to be open and honest here, from the very start.
So, I’ve posted a handful of affiliate links in the past, but I’ve always felt a little dirty afterwards, and I’ve earned exactly $0.00 off of them. After recently spending a couple of days of concentrated research on affiliate linking, I came to the final conclusion that undisclosed affiliate links for profit just don’t fit into my personal ethical framework. That’s just me – maybe they fit neatly into your ethical framework. I’m certainly not making the claim that my ethical framework is superior to yours. FYI: some subject matter experts are of the opinion that the FTC’s October 05, 2009 revision of endorsement guides indicates that undisclosed affiliate links for profit don’t mesh well with the FTC’s ethical (or legal) framework, either.
I Am Not A Book Seller
To be honest, I was happy to hear about the FTC’s revised guides. They seem to be on the same ethical page as I am. And, after having occasion to research various product classes online in the past couple of months (e.g. WordPress Themes, Web Hosts), I had grown supremely tired of finding only scads of blog articles and bogus review sites that were nothing more than thinly-veiled search engine bait, designed to lure unsuspecting visitors to their sites, in the hope that those visitors would click on the site owners’ undisclosed affiliate links. I’m sorry, but I think that kind of behavior is bad for the Internet, and I would love to see it go away.
What were my options? I could post affiliate links for commission if I disclosed them to my readers. That seems OK for the FTC, and ethically OK for me, as well. But here’s the deal: I’ve been working in the software and Internet industries for more than ten years now. I’ve developed real, marketable skills and experience. I prefer to market those skills and provide something of tangible value to satisfied customers. I’m not a seller of other peoples’ books, nor am I a reseller of hosting services, ‘Premium’ WordPress themes, Acai Berries or Viagra shipped from Brazil.
I’d still like to offer my blog readers well-researched, reasoned reviews of products that I’ve bought and used. And I might as well put links on my blog that make it easy for my readers to buy those products, if they’re interested. And if the online retailers I link to offer to pay commissions on purchases made through affiliate links, it seems a shame to leave those commissions in the hands of the retailers.
Charity!
That’s the ticket! It’s got to be easy to find affiliate IDs for legitimate charities. I can put their IDs in my links and let the charities collect the commissions. It’s a win-win-win-win situation: I get to link out to products that I review, my readers get honest and unbiased reviews (and a chance to donate commissions on their purchases to charities at no cost to them), the retailers get to sell more items, and the charities get a new source of donations! I figured there had to be an online clearing house for charity affiliate ID’s. I was wrong (or at least I was unable to find any, and my google-fu is pretty strong). Not only that, but I was unable to find any affiliate ID’s belonging to the major charities I searched for.
I quickly realized it was going to be more work to find the charity affiliate IDs than I’d first estimated. Since I’m not an A-List blogger with millions of monthly visits, donations to charities through links on my own sites were going to be pitifully small. Add to that the fact that I’d have to explain to (and hopefully convince) my readers that all commissions from affiliate links on my blog went to charities, and it started to seem like more trouble than it was worth.
And then it hit me: I could make the list of charity affiliate ID’s available to other bloggers! And that was the birth of AffiliatesForCharity.org and 4char.it/y .
Quo Vadis?
I hope this site becomes a giant clearinghouse for verified charity affiliate IDs. It’s going to require a lot of help, and the road is going to be rocky. The potential for fraud or ethical lapses is certainly there. It’s going to require principled people with sharp minds to help head fraud off at the pass, and volunteers who can help tackle all manner of administrative and technical tasks. It’s going to require charities to sign up for affiliate IDs and communicate those IDs to us. It’s going to require lots of help spreading the word, generating interest and keeping this effort honest.
I’m excited by the possibilities, and I hope you are, too. If you like the idea and would like to help make it a success, take a look here and start helping out today!
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