[20-OCT-2015] Refinements of forum categories and rules on affiliate links / codes

Your logic is flawed. :stuck_out_tongue:

the real Problem is (and always have been):

some shops do not use afflinks, but count the sales by the used codes.
so you never had the chance to “unaffiliate“ your order on other shops as banggood.
80% of the “groupbuy“ or “best price again“ or whatever deals you clicked did benefit someone.

  • you may feel tricked now… :wink:

Sb searched a way to make that more balanced again and tried not to penalize only banggood affiliates.

+ 1

+1 they should be banned for good. That would also bring some relief in flood of threads with buy this-buy that content.

Not only this ^ but it literally costs you NOTHING to click an aff link, so in cases where there is not a non-aff link, what have you lost? And, if aff-links are so bad, you still have a choice of simply NOT BUYING the item, or of buying it somewhere else. Trying to FORCE your hatred of aff-links into law is something you should go to some other forum for. IMHO, there is no place for that here at BLF.

Yep. Gratitude, daily.

Thanks for the reminder, hank. :wink:

Elaborate

I completely agree. This definitely invites more abuse with a blind eye deliberately turned away from managing it. We already have far more than our share of members who skate on the cusp of vague BLF policy for their own personal monetary gain and other benefits. The primary complaint of members against aff links is that BLF provides a safe harbor for these unscrupulous activities, where most other forums expressly forbid it. Its gotten far out of hand and detracts from the value of information provided on this forum.

At the very least, can you please make it mandatory that all aff links must be accompanied by non-aff links, regardless of where they are posted? Some specific verbiage in that regard would be greatly appreciated.

That was officially a rule! I also dont udersatnd why they can now post affiliate links without a non-aff link.

Your logic is flawed because you are not agreeing with yourself. Here’s how the logic might look in a step-by-step format. There are obviously going to be many more steps, and they may not happen in this exact order.

To start with, we’re assuming that you like flashlights, and you’re happy to find a deal on a flashlight that pleases you. So, you come to BLF and leaf through the pages, not necessarily looking for a deal, but maybe. So, we’ll pick up there. Follow along.

1) The deal is posted.
2) You decide it’s a good deal and you’re willing to buy the item at that price
3) You look for a link to buy the item.
4) Since the link is affiliate, that means the person who posted the deal that you’ve already decided is a good one will be getting a small cut from the seller which you won’t pay for.
5) You demand a non-aff link be provided for the deal that the affiliate made possible for you.

So, you’ve already decided that the deal is good. But, philosophically you disagree with the aff-link and don’t want to use it. The affiliate program is about advertising. The seller asks affiliates to advertise for them and pays them for the service. Because of the advertising, you find a deal that is good. If there were no advertising, you would have no access to the good deal. But, you want to interfere with the affiliate program and yet still get the good deal. It would be like getting coupons in the mail and using them at the store, while at the same time complaining to the store manager that you got coupons in the mail.

Now, here’s how you can fix your broken logic. Agree with yourself. That’s it! Just decide whether you want the deals or not. Then go with that. So, either the affiliate program should exist and bring you deals OR it should not exist and/or not bring any good deals to you. I understand that there are many people on BLF that would just as soon do without the deals that affiliates bring. Maybe you’re one of them. Well, I disagree, but at least that is sound logic. Demanding that affiliates post non-aff links is not sound logic. I also understand that some of them do post non-aff links. Logically, that should be their prerogative. But, ironically, probably the best way to encourage more affiliates to post non-aff links is to click on the aff-links of the ones who do. Money talks, ya know.

Then again, if what M4DM4X said a few posts back is true, then a lot of your “non-aff” links still come with a payout anyway. It’s tied to the item discount code, so it is literally impossible to get the deal without paying the affiliate. And with all the animosity being shown in this forum toward aff-links, it might become the new norm.

Ah..no, not again...

not going to waste my energy on this crap! ;p

Debating the merits of another person’s logic is verboten! :party:

Nicely put, ChibiM & FlashPilot!

+9001!

Fortunately for us, debating will not be necessary, as logic is absolute and measurable, just like math. :wink:

Language barrier? I don’t know. But, you missed what I said, apparently. And, no need to waste your energy on me. Save it for flashlights! :bigsmile:

Well, I wish there was a way to satisfy everyone’s preferences, but unfortunately there isn’t. We have a lot of members that want to see affiliate links, because they bring better deals. But also a few of our very knowledgeable and valued members detest them. At this point, few if any will change their position for or against affiliate links. So the best I can do is restrict them to a specific area of the forum, which has already been done. So I would recommend that the affiliate link haters not visit the “BLF User Negotiated Deals” section. And to make it easier for them to avoid it, I have created a Recent Posts page with threads from “BLF User Negotiated Deals” filtered out:

http://budgetlightforum.com/recent-posts-noaff

Bravo.

The lesson from Usenet is that killfiles work.
If something makes you crazy, don’t grab hold of it and hang on — arrange for yourself not to see it .

I think the best way is to get rid of them completely..

its absurd to think we should recommend members to not be part of BLF where we can get good deals..

whats the BLF deals alert thread for? where have the good deals been posted in the last 5 years? for who? who provided them? how?

frankly I have gotten much better deals through the aff-linkers than I ever got on the BLF deals alert thread. If I have email updates about martins thread and about the BLF Deal thread, I check Martins thread first.

That’s all besides the point. I think SB has done very well at reaching a compromise that works for both user sets, especially now that you can have your own ’Recent Posts’ page with the aff threads filtered out.

Let’s stop giving SB more grief and causing strife, because as SB said, most people have already made up their minds about the issue. All of the hostility and passive-aggressive comments hurt this forum more than anything else.

Keep Calm and Flash On.