Affiliate links on the forum (for newcomers)

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Hey there, I’m trying the new option of the forum to put “house ads” by having my own affiliate links of things I use. I don’t see it as ads like Adsense or such BS.

But still, I’m interested in your feedback with this trial: do you see it as a negative impact? Or was it more trolling about my statement in my Patreon blogpost? Or what not? Please be rude and honest, your opinion count more than a few bucks!

EDIT: I fined tuned the setup to display it only to newcomers, so that as a regular Mustachian forumers you don’t get bother by seeing the same thing over and over.
I view it as more fair, like new people arriving having affiliate that 1/ they may have never seen and be interested in, and 2/ helping financing the forum hosting and setup as they enjoy the forum huge content base for free while they still didn’t participate at it yet. And as soon as their forum status change, affiliate links disappear.
Any feedback on such setup also highly appreciated.

(I will split this thread as soon as I’m on my laptop — mobile here)…

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Hey MP,
mine was for sure trolling, i dont mind some ads, the internet got me almost immune to it. Just three things would really piss me off:

  • animated/ moving stuff
  • ads that need active action in order to see the forum content
  • bloated loading times

of which none i saw so far.

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My 2 cents:
I don’t find it bothering, as long as it shows up only at the bottom of the thread and not in the middle between two posts.
It might be a bit weird at the moment since you only have two links showing up. It sounds very repetitive and seems like you are really pushing it. Is there an option to limit the total number of times the same link shows up? I guess the newcomer thing has a similar effect.

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Never. Ever!

Nah, I’d make the forum paid else. But far from me this idea!

I better kill it now then! Never!

Thanks for taking the time to answer @nugget !

As said I was just playing around and the first feedbacks came in so quickly that I changed the setup already.

Now it is:

  • Only newcomers
  • Only at the bottom of the thread

@Gesk do you feel it’s better? (btw thanks a lot to you too for replying! and actually you shouldn’t see any affiliate link anymore)

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Yes I actually don’t see any link anymore.

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I was trolling as well, I am fine with some monetizing. And most of them are caught by my adblocker anyway. I hope it will bring you some nice income!

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I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. Are there some ads we are supposed to se somewhere?

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My 2c since I started this :slight_smile:

This is important. They are not tracking ads since they are self-hosted. (ofc. if you click them you get tracked by them…)

This kind of ad is for me OK, especially because they are just at the bottom. They might be useless for normal users since their content is usually well known.

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Go for it make some money for your FI is well deserved and what we all would like to have )side hustles)

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Hey @Bojack !
It’s actually only for newcomers on the forum, to not pollute the others’ experience.

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