When people visit a blog for the first time, there’s a tendency for them to be a little nervous about clicking hyper-links.
- Some links provide relevant information to the reader, regarding the subject you are covering.
- Some point to affiliate partners.
- Some links manage to do both successfully. They send the reader to an affiliate partner, who offers a product that provides an answer that the reader of that particular post should find useful.
Full disclosure on hyper-links
Many websites and blogs link from their content to affiliate sites, without letting their readers know. This has the opposite impact from what the site owner wants. Far from making more readers visit and buy from their affiliate partners, it causes readers to be cautious about the links on that site and many will either not return or not click future links for fear of being ’suckered’ again.
In my experience, the fastest way to earn the trust of your readers, is to let them know when a link points to an affiliate site. By doing this, 2 things happen.
Firstly, the reader learns by default that any links not marked-up as affiliates, are going to send them to something the author is NOT being paid to promote. This helps your readers learn to trust you and your content, because they know you are not trying to fool them into clicking on anything. So, if you happen to mention that the new Satuma 1500 is a great camera and you link to that site, if there’s no disclosure about the link, your readers will know automatically that you are not being rewarded for that recommendation.
Secondly, the people that do click your fully disclosed affiliate links will not feel as if they were fooled into it. This means that you retain their trust.
How does affiliate disclosure on hyper-links work?
It’s really easy to show your readers when a hyper-link points to an affiliate. You simply put the word affiliate in brackets (or parentheses) next to the link. For example, here’s how I would give a disclosed link to my Headway affiliate:
Using the Headway(affiliate) wordpress theme, anyone can build a blog from scratch, without knowing HTML or touching the CSS. That’s why I use it and recommend it to everyone.
So long as the reader knows that the link points to an affiliate, it doesn’t really matter how you do it. I wrote a post here last week about becoming an affiliate of Headway and made sure not to link to Headway at all, until after I said that I was an affiliate. In other words, because the post was all about me using the product and becoming an affiliate, there was no need to use the (affiliate) text.
Many people think that it’s clever to fake people into clicking links. I have been in marketing for 23 years and had my own marketing business for the past 14 years and can assure you that NO ONE likes to be made a fool of. Full disclosure of hyper-links is a great way to show you respect your readers and that’s the fastest way to earn their respect.
There are two points of extreme importance in this post Jim.
1. “It’s really easy to show your readers when a hyper-link points to an affiliate.”
Absolutely and totally agree. I like to know exactly what this link is and what it actually means to the author. I prefer not to all this transparency however, its honesty and honesty goes al long way in life. Plain and simple.
2. “can assure you that NO ONE likes to be made a fool of.”
If you saw the post I did recently regarding my car insurance (http://www.justinparks.com/car-insurance-spain-linea-directa-taking-the-piss/ … sorry for the use of the explicative, but I was a “little” annoyed to say the least) im sure you will see that i have come away from the experience having been made to feel like a fool. This is a cardinal sin in my mind when it comes to dealing with customers and business alike in the respect of sales and marketing.
The post itself has been read and you can see by the comments that there is some quite negative feedback from others and with good reason. What damage has this company don to its image and brand by acting in this manner?
How could they have avoid it? Simple. See point 1. No one likes being taken for a fool and they have left me feeling resentful and bitter at their treatment after being a loyal customer for 3 years. Not good practice at all is it.
You make a couple of good points here. Honesty is essential for a blogger, if he or she wants to earn the trust of their blogs community. Regarding the post you did about the naff treatment your insurance company gave you; it’s NOT wise to treat customers badly. This has always been the case, but never more so than in the ’social media’ age.
I did a post on my marketing blog about poor service by my phone provider, 02. Now, if you Google the term ‘02 customer service’, you see my post (often on page 1). No idea what impact this has had on them – but a few years ago only my family and friends would have known. Today, thousands of people have found the post and know of my experience.
Just thought that this was an interesting point of view regarding the subject as well Jim, definitely points to consider from our mutual friend Angie Haggstrom especially when we consider how much blogs can give visitors and how much you may need to recoup for the effort when you rely on it as your main business.
http://www.angiescopywriting.com/forwriters/bloggers-dirty-money.html
What people are saying (after last weeks FTC ruling) is NOT that bloggers should not get paid to write posts; but that they should disclose it when someone is paying them to give a product or service a favourable review or testimonial.
Consumers are checking out which new camera to buy and reading stunning reviews – from people being paid in cash (or kind) and as a result, they are buying crap.
I am all for making money from your blog. However, I believe a blogger should disclose to their readers, if they are being paid to say XYZ is great.
Yep, I am in agreement with you there Jim and even Chris Brogan has made his feelings known on the issue, though the comments in this thread are also very interesting:
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/my-thoughts-on-the-ftc-disclosure-rules-and-bloggers/
I wonder if the whole thing is as cut and dry as we think. Time will tell I guess and I am waiting now on how Europe reacts to the FTC ruling, interesting times as usual!
I was always told to hide the hyperlink by affiliate marketers, but I always thought that was pretty unethical. I’ll have to try out positioning and identifying my links properly to get them clicked, haha. Thanks for the interesting post!
I find it amazing that some affiliate marketers are telling people to try and hide hyper-links. Unreal.