"Affiliate" criteria

I’ve just joined this forum and – after reading a few topical posts - got a rough idea that certain “affiliate” sites are rejected by DMOZ. Randomly browsing the Internet, I see *many* DMOZ-listed sites that have affiliate links (e.g. Google AdSense, Amazon.com affiliate links, affiliate banner ads, etc.).

Some examples:

http://www.dvdfile.com/
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/
etc.

So I am curious as to the criteria that qualifies a site as “affiliate”. Did some sites – such as the ones I listed above – make it into the DMOZ directory *before* the ODP adopted “affiliate rules.” If such rules exist, where are they listed on the DMOZ site? They are not here (http://www.dmoz.org/help/submit.html) and I think many affiliate marketers (like me) may be (or have been) wasting their time with go-nowhere (and no-rejection-response) submissions.

Thx for any info you can provide.

-KH

The basic rule is that if the site provides information without the affiliate links, then it's ok. If the purpose of the site if to drive traffic to affiliates, then it's not ok.

In other words, if a site provides good content, then it's ok to have ads on it. If the ads start becoming the overwhelming part of the sites, it's not good.

However, it's quite common, for companies to create sites whose real intention it to send customeres to the ads, and the content is just added afterwards. It's often editor judgement and whne to exclude these.

It's like the differnence between public TV, regular TV and informercials. The first has no ads, the second is content with ads, the last is ads pretending to be a TV show.

This was very informative response -- thank you.

bobrat said:

It's like the differnence between public TV, regular TV and informercials. The first has no ads, the second is content with ads, the last is ads pretending to be a TV show.

Click to expand...

Public tv/radio has gotten more "commercial" over the years, as seen/heard before a program begins. I'm guessing that their membership drives weren't quite cutting it.

-KH

One more thing...

bobrat said:

In other words, if a site provides good content, then it's ok to have ads on it. If the ads start becoming the overwhelming part of the sites, it's not good.

However, it's quite common, for companies to create sites whose real intention it to send customers to the ads, and the content is just added afterwards. It's often editor judgment and when to exclude these.

Click to expand...

I realize that DMOZ/ODP has and abuse-report system. However, I'm not clear as to how *existing* DMOZed sites are watch-dogged. Say the owners of an information-based site found -- over the years -- that they needed to pay for their costs by placing more and more banner ads or other affiliate links. Does this practice effectively take the site out of its *original* DMOZ-worthy qualification?

-KH

Sites are re-reviewed by editors, so those sites will be spotted eventually. Of course, due to thr voluntary nature of our project, we can't say when this will happen. If you spot such a site, please use the "Update URL" feature to leave us a note, someone will process it sooner or later.