AndrewL
Active Member
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2015
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- 160
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- Canada
I think The Wirecutter has an excellent statement regarding biases and benefits of affiliate income. I've been in agreement for years and I'm running my reviews off the same model:
I think the key is the transparency behind the review process and trust generated over a long period of time. Techmoan won't jeopardize the trust with his audience. He has his own biases as do we all.
That's referring to quality fade? How significant are the changes in quality - short term or long term problems?
Doesn’t getting affiliate fees create a conflict of interest and bias?
We think it does create a bias—a bias to write about a lot of things with affiliate codes threaded in them. But we think it’s less of a conflict of interest than traditional advertising. Affiliate pay does not, in our opinion, create a worse situation than running a site based on pageviews, because publishers still get paid for ads on stories that are hyped up, unnecessarily controversial, or broken into multiple pages. Even stories that are flat-out incorrect. We know from past experience.
All we can say is that the most important things to the health of this site are its reputation and its relationship with readers. Here’s why: We are going to recommend gear, no matter what, and we’re going to make our best efforts to recommend the things that we truly believe are worth the money. If we recommend something because we are biased or lazy and the pick sucks, you can return the piece of gear and we will make zero dollars. We also invite you to fact check any of our pieces, which outline the time, logic, and energy spent researching, interviewing experts, and testing gear. Often, this is more than dozens—sometimes even hundreds—of hours.
All the evidence on why our picks are the right ones are laid out plainly in each guide for you to believe or not believe. And the two times we got it wrong so far, we’ve written clear explanations and apologies on the front page of the site. We don’t enjoy doing it. But pride is less important than our ultimate priority of making sure we’re recommending good gear and doing the right thing for all our readers, who are ultimately the ones who pay for this research.
I think the key is the transparency behind the review process and trust generated over a long period of time. Techmoan won't jeopardize the trust with his audience. He has his own biases as do we all.
no, but the normal Chinese business model is how to constantly make things cheaper so subsequent productions of a same item generally start to lose quality pretty quickly
That's referring to quality fade? How significant are the changes in quality - short term or long term problems?
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