Never blindly trust an online recommendation, even mine.
Hi, everyone. Leo Notenboom here for AskLeo.com. Some
years ago, I got an interesting comment on one of my articles.
It went like this, "From Billy Bob Macrium.
Mr. Leo, your check is in the mail."
I got that as a comment on "How do I restore back up to a smaller hard drive?"
Presumably the person leaving a comment
was implying, or perhaps challenging, that I might be receiving some kind
of monetary kickback for recommending Macrium Reflect as often as I do.
As it turns out, the implication is wrong.
There are two very distinct reasons that I don't in the case of Macrium,
and I have to admit, when I saw this, I was kind of irritated.
Nobody likes having their ethics
questioned, of course, but it got me to thinking that it actually
does raise a very, very important point that I don't think
a lot of people are aware of, and that, I think is very important
for you to take into consideration as you review the massive amounts of information
and recommendations that are available on the Internet.
The key for this I'll call this legitimate
approach to making money on the Internet is what are called affiliate programs.
Affiliate programs are really nothing more
than what might have in the past been called a finder's fee.
In other words, I bring a customer to a place of business,
and in return, that place of business gives me a monetary reward.
It's very common for this to happen on the Internet.
The way it manifests on the Internet is that if, for example,
I recommend a product or I mentioned a product and I have a link
to that product on my webpage, then if you click on that link and if you
end up buying the product, I might get a percentage of the purchase price.
It doesn't affect your purchase price,
but it does reward me for talking about the product and for sending you,
as a customer to the manufacturer of that product.
So how much money is involved?
Well, it varies.
For example, Amazon has one of the most popular affiliate programs around,
and in fact, there's a strong argument that says that their affiliate program was
responsible for their incredible growth, especially early on as a retailer.
Right now, the affiliate Commission, as it's called,
that I might get from somebody purchasing an Amazon product after having clicked
on one of my links is on the order like 2% to 5%.
It's not a whole lot.
There are other products out there, unfortunately.
I never run across them for the kinds
of things that I want to recommend, but there are absolutely products out
there that will give you things like 20, 30, 50, sometimes 60%.
Over half of the purchase price will go
to the person who sent the customer to the manufacturer or to the seller.
With those high percentages,
there's usually some kind of ongoing commitment beyond the initial purchase so
that the seller is going to make their money one way or another.
And it's really worth it to them to pay
affiliates to encourage them to send customers.
But obviously, that kind of thing isn't necessarily what's happening here.
This is more traditional software, 5%,
10%, maybe 20% at most for affiliate recommendations.
Now, the problem, of course, is that affiliate relationships can be abused.
They can be really abused.
In other words, there's now a monetary
incentive for me to recommend a specific product.
It's only my integrity that prevents me from not abusing that.
In my case, I choose what I believe to be the best
product or a product I'm willing to recommend.
And then I'll see if it's got an affiliate program.
But there are definitely folks out there who are looking at affiliate programs
and they will choose what they want to recommend based on things like
affiliate percentages, Commission percentages,
how much money they can make, not the suitableness, the quality,
the appropriateness of the product they're recommending.
They're just recommending products because if you buy it, they'll make some money.
Again, that's not how I operate.
I'll talk about that in a minute,
but it's an example of one example, actually, of how affiliate sales
and affiliate commissions can be abused to cause the wrong products to be promoted
as if they are recommended based on quality, when in fact they're being
recommended because the recommender gets a cut.
One of the other issues, of course, is that comments and reviews can be faked.
We see this a lot in various places,
actually, on Amazon, on other products, in one of the common scenarios
that honestly frustrates me when I'm actually looking for a recommendation
myself, if I'm looking for a specific piece of hardware or a specific piece
of software, and I go out and say such and such comparison or best such and such.
What I'll usually find is a site
that recommends multiple different products in rank order.
There will be a number one here's.
What I don't know
is number one.
Number one because it's the best product,
or is it number one because it pays a higher affiliate Commission?
Don't know.
And of course, some companies have been
known to set up fake review sites of their own so that irrespective of best product
or affiliate status, their product, coincidentally,
always happens to win because they set up the product comparison site.
It may not be obvious that they set it up, but they set it up.
So those are things to be very aware of.
And it happens even on Ask Leo.
Comments One of the ongoing problems
for any website that takes comment is comment spam.
And the issue here, of course, is that when somebody leaves a comment
on an article talking about X and they say, you know what?
X is good, but I really like Y has been really good for me.
And here's a link.
Is it legit
we really don't know.
It could be someone trying to insert an affiliate link into a comment.
It could be a manufacturer trying to promote their own product.
Or it just could be someone really
honestly expressing a good experience with a product.
We do our best to weed those out.
It's one of the reasons that the instructions associated
with comments will say that anything that looks like spam,
legitimate or otherwise, if it looks like spam, we're going to delete it.
That's one of the reasons that statement exists.
I have to be able to delete those things without any reservation at all.
And of course, whenever somebody says something about
a product online, are they even qualified to talk about it?
There are sites like Ask Leo! And others that are very qualified.
Don't get me wrong.
There are people out there who really know their stuff and are worth paying attention
to, whether they're colored by affiliate relationships, I honestly can't tell you.
But anybody can put up a site.
Anybody can say whatever they want.
Anyone can position themselves as an expert, whether or not they really are.
Which means if you combine that with the lure of this monetary
incentive for affiliate money, it gets really confusing really quick.
So I do want to outline specifically what I do because
I think it's important to realize that there are good guys out there.
I hope I'm not the only one.
I'm trying to be one.
Here's how it works.
Almost all of the products I recommend are products that I use personally.
I'll use Macrium Reflect as an example.
I use Macrium Reflect.
I also use Easeus Todo not so much because
I feel I need multiple products, but because I wanted to experience
the product before recommending it to anybody.
So I've got some machines that are backing up regularly with Macrium Reflect,
some that are backing up regularly with Easusus Todo, great.
I'm happy.
But before I recommend those products, I use them myself.
I have to be happy with the product before I'm going to say you should give it a try.
There are occasional exceptions.
Those occasional exceptions are when it's
not a product that I do use or would use, but there is someone out there whom I
truly trust to be given an appropriate recommendation.
I might pass that recommendation on, but actually that's rare.
I actually can't think of a scenario right now where I've got that on my site,
but that's the one exception to my rule that for the most part,
if I'm going to recommend something, I'll have had to have used it myself
and think of it as being worthy of recommending.
It also has to be what I would call
significant enough to warrant a recommendation.
It's a little fuzzier, but I don't make recommendations lightly.
So I'm not going to recommend the latest
flash in the pan something or other because it's cool or it's exciting.
It needs to be significant.
It needs to solve a serious problem.
It needs to solve an important problem,
and it needs to solve it in an appropriate way.
I have criteria for backup software that falls into that category.
It's all of those criteria, which is why I probably recommend those
two backup programs specifically, because they are that important.
In the grand scheme of things, it is that significant.
Now.
It's only after I will use a product
and then decide to recommend it that I will then take a look and see if
there's an affiliate relationship, if it's even an option.
Very often this happens after sometimes
long after I've written my recommendation article and published it,
because it's not on the list of things I look for when I publish an article.
It's something that I think of later.
Hey, I recommended such and such a year ago.
I wonder if they've got an affiliate program.
Oh, look, they do or they don't.
This is where the macro and Reflect
accusation, if you will, falls apart.
Because for one thing, I use Racking and Reflect.
I was using it, and I would only recommend it if I had been happy with it.
And I am.
And Reflect has no affiliate program.
I get no money from recommending them.
Or if you buy a copy of the product, I'm not involved.
I could be a Reseller, I suppose,
but that's way more involved than I want to be.
So since there's no simple affiliate
program for me to just replace a link and have it be counted, I don't.
I still recommend it often all the time,
as a matter of fact, but I don't get any extra money by recommending it now.
Full disclosure Easeus Todo has an affiliate program.
I honestly haven't looked at it for quite some time.
I'm not even sure if the links to Easus Todo are affiliate links.
As always, I had to use it first.
I had to be happy with it.
I had to see that it solves an important
problem in a way that I felt was appropriate.
Then I recommended it, then I published my articles on it,
and only then did I go looking for an affiliate program.
And in their case, yes, they happen to have one.
Like I said, I'm not even sure if I've got it fully implemented on my site.
Assume that it is assumed that I get some kind of percentage of the purchase price
if you end up buying east is to do it's not huge.
And again, as I said, it does not affect the price you pay.
If it did affect the price you pay, I would not use the affiliate link.
That's just not acceptable.
So, like I said, that's the approach that I take.
And those are two examples where I go both ways on affiliate links.
It's not a requirement for me to recommend
something, but this is a business, and I'd be silly to leave money
on the table by not using an affiliate program if one was available for a product
that I felt was good enough to warrant a recommendation.
So what does this all really mean to you? Right.
Affiliate links kickbacks
money coming from the sellers to encourage people to recommend their product.
What does it really all mean to you?
It's very simple.
Find someone you trust.
Seriously, that's all it comes down to when you're looking at recommendations.
Make sure you understand who is doing the recommending.
Make sure they are someone you trust or
make sure that their recommendations are in line with those made by others.
Obviously, I hope that you trust me, but you don't have to.
It's much more important that you find
resources and sources that you trust that you can rely on.
Remember, anybody can put anything on the internet for any reason.
It doesn't even have to be true as we have
been so sorely taught these last few years that makes trust such an important
commodity, such an important thing for you to work at developing.
It is critical you must approach the internet with what I call a healthy
dose of skepticism and hopefully hopefully find those resources.
Find those individuals, those companies,
those sites, those magazines, those whatevers that will make
recommendations that you can ultimately trust.
Whether or not there's an affiliate program involved, regardless of how they
make their money, do you trust them if you do, fantastic.
If you don't, it might be time to think
twice about where you're getting your recommendations.
Hope this helps clarify a little bit
of the whole ecosystem when it comes to affiliate programs.
For updates for related links,
for comments and more visit askleo.com/5533. I'm Leo Notenboom this is askleo.Com.
Thanks for watching.