where do you draw the line on affiliate links

Hello,

I am developing a website which will primarily consist of articles explaining a technical subject to a lay audience. The site will also have archived interviews with industry experts and a blog for people to post questions if they’re still confused, and lastly, a directory of major retailers who specialize in the subject matter of the site. This will, of course, be a great deal of work and expense, and result in entirely unique content. I would like to have some compensation and am considering reviewing my directory, after the fact, and adding affiliate code to any links to companies that have affiliate programs. This will in no way affect the uniqueness of the site or its usefulness to consumers, its just a way to try to get some financial support for the site.

I have heard in another forum that, although your guidelines state that one should not submit sites which consist “largely of affiliate links”, even one affiliate link might cause a site to be deleted from your directory. I also find the editorial guidelines for the ODP regarding affiliate links to be very confusing. Are you talking about cookie-cutter sites that are sold lock-stock-and barrel and do not stock their own product, but rather only relay orders to the big dog to be dropshipped? If your own directory (ODP) added affiliate code to its links after the fact, would that make the directory not unique or useful? Are referring only to sites have affiliate links only for the sake of the links, and do not offer any unique structure or content? I simply cannot infer, from what is published on dmoz.org, exactly what the spirit or letter of the law regarding affiliate links is at the ODP. Please explain further, and detail where the lines are drawn, so that I might understand and not submit anything to the ODP that would be frowned upon.

Thank you,
Luftikus

It isn't so much a line in the sand as it is a tipping of the scales.

If you have a good solid website with lots of unique content, and some affiliate content, then you are not going to have a problem.

If, however, we click onto your site and it is a rat's nest of affliate links and content, and we can't easily locate that which is unique, then you are probably not going to get listed in ODP.

What we are not going to do is say you cannot have more than n affilaitelinks, because that type of statement is a magnet for abuse.

Personal advice: build the best web site you can with as much unique content as you can -- if you do that, some affilaite links should not be an obstacle to a listing.

If (in the editors' judgment) the site exists primarily to drive commercial traffic to other sites [this could be affiliate links, drop-ship order taking, advertising banner farms, or other means of achieving the same purpose], then the site should not be listed.

What you describe could end up being either a genuine consumer information site, or a genuine spammy affiliate-banner-farm-wearing-fright-mask. Without looking at the actual site, we couldn't tell.

The amount of work and expense is irrelevant -- there are all sorts of ways of wasting time and money. And the uniqueness should lie in the INFORMATION, not its presentation. Again, it's hard to tell from the description. Many marketroid types call their original ad-copywriting "unique", but we would disagree. And much of the so-called "informational" sites are little more than vague promotional platitudes, devoid of non-obvious content. (Attributed recognizable authorities, by the way, is possibly a good thing. But we'd have to look to make sure.)

Your site wouldn't be reviewed in a vacuum -- for several reasons (not all ODP related), the affiliate-marketing lemmings are all scurrying the way you describe this season. (Last year it was "newsletters." Bleagh.) You'll have to stand out from the rest of the swarm. (If there are similar listed sites, you'd need to have one of the best such sites, not merely the second-worst.)

If your own directory (ODP) added affiliate code to its links after the fact, would that make the directory not unique or useful?

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Speaking as a user, yes, it would make it less useful and unique. As an editor, I'd probably leave if that happened.

Economy

hutcheson said:

The amount of work and expense is irrelevant -- there are all sorts of ways of wasting time and money.

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Time and expense are relevant. If you spend too much time without compensation, you go hungry. If you spend too much money without compensation, you go broke. If you do nothing, no one benefits. A balance must achieved. In this instance, on one side of the scales there is my work and expense, on the other side there is compensation, currently proposed in the from of affiliate links. The final balance affects the audience. If work and expense were not relevant to the discussion of policy, then Adam Smith would never have written "...the Wealth of Nations", Google would never have gone public, and no one would submit anything to the ODP.

Are you serious? Did you truly not understand that hutcheson meant that the time and expense you put into a website are not relevant factors for our editorial decision?

At risk of being further misunderstood, I may try to answer the question another way, by some specific advice:

Make all your pecuniary calculations based on the assumption that the ODP either will never list the site, or won't get around to listing it until after some time AFTER it has been made successful by its own merits and your effort.

If your website isn't worth doing for its own sake, for the sake of the visitors you can find without the ODP, it will almost certainly not be worth doing. The web appeared without benefit of the ODP, and if the ODP died tomorrow, millions of webmasters would carry on without difficulty. (Some people think we're God. We think they're idolators.)

This is only advice. But I can almost promise you that if you don't take it, you will be disappointed in the ODP and in the results of your own work; and also that in the process you'll have earned a reputation among ODP editors as an abusive submitter.

So do your site, if YOU think it's worth it. WE won't EVER think it's worth listing until it's done (and maybe not then.) But the web is large, and there are zillions of promotional opportunities not involving the ODP (and none involving it!). It is your money and your time, and you are free to expend it however you wish.

Reading Adam Smith is a very good idea. "Wealth of Nations" is important here, but I'd recommend starting where he did, with the "Theory of Moral Sentiments." Reading up on the background in Hutcheson's ethics is probably too much to ask -- and I'm not sure Hutcheson is a reliable guide to the answers, although he opens some important questions.

Thanks for the info.

Spectregunner and Hutcheson,

Thank you for your replies, you've done a great job of answering my questions and I feel like I have a good feel for your editorial policies now. It seems that the issue is primarily complicated by spammers, clearly they need to be weeded out. I just hope that babies aren't being thrown out with the bathwater in the process.

To answer brmehlman's question as to whether or not I am serious, I must remind you that my response to Hutcheson is dependant upon Hutcheson's response to my original post, which is in turn dependant upon the original context in which I mentioned time and expense. If you defer to the original context in which they were mentioned, I think you will see that whether or not I was serious did not deserve to be questioned. If Hutcheson was misunderstood, so was my point in mentioning time and expense in the first place.

What I am saying is that the presence of things which might be frowned upon, such as affiliate links, may be a simple economic necessity for business owners and should not cause them to be thrown into the same association as people who are spamming your directory with junk.

Thanks again for your replies!

I just hope that babies aren't being thrown out with the bathwater in the process.

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That is of foremost concern to us as well.

Without going onto a twisty backroad that will take us no where, I think that the issue/sensitivity on time and expense is that when an editor evaluates a website for possible inclusion in the directory, the time, effort and expense involved carries virtually no weight.

That's why so many editors, when they put on their "I think I'll go build out a category" hat often turn to places like Geocities, Lycos, Angelfire and the like, looking for those wonderfully quirky websites that were built and hosted at no cost, with no commercial gain in mind -- but are wonderfully rich in unique content.

To answer Motsa's question as to whether or not I am serious...

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Er, where did I ask that?

What I am saying is that the presence of things which might be frowned upon, such as affiliate links, may be a simple economic necessity for business owners and should not cause them to be thrown into the same association as people who are spamming your directory with junk.

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Affiliate links are affiliate links. And if your site has a lot of affiliate links, it doesn't matter to us why you've placed those affiliate links there. If the ratio of affiliate links to other content is too high from our point of view, it's all junk, whether the site owner is an "honest business owner" or a spammer. There are no special allowances because you're trying to make ends meet and feed your kids.