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Confessions of an Amazon Associate

Confessions of an Amazon Associate


  • James Ledbetter is editor of The Big Money, and of The Great Depression: A Diary, published this month by Public Affairs.

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Submitted by dan.mitchell on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 5:25pm.

conflict

Two things occur to me: 1.) Despite my status as a TBM contributor, I have no how much revenue is generated through the affiliate program, but I would be surprised to hear it was enough to make for a truly problematic conflict (though disclosure is always a good thing) and 2.) It is certainly a service to readers, not to enable a purchase so much as to get them to more information about the book. Reviews, price, author info, reader reviews, search-inside, etc. I go to Amazon probably 10 times as often for info as I do for an actual purchase.

Submitted by james.ledbetter on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 10:57pm.

Yep

Dan: Two good points. Quick response:

1) It ain't much, at least right now. It's a very, very small amount of money, so small that you're right--it does not in and of itself create a conflict. On the other hand, we all on this side would want it to grow, right? So in a way, if scale is the issue, if it's not a problem now, we're oddly rooting for it to get to the point where it might be! That's why they call it a conflict.

2) Yes, excellent point: An Amazon page, even for someone who doesn't make a purchase, can be a great source of information, much as a stock quote page can be about a company, even if the reader has no intention of buying that stock.

 

Submitted by nancy.miller on Thu, 07/02/2009 - 10:48am.

amazon bedfellow

As a journalist who has largely transitioned to new media (including The Big Money), I can say the separation between editorial and advertising at newspapers was often illusory. I wrote a real estate column for one paper that ran only when a particular advertiser decided to show up. This particular advertiser had no influence, strictly speaking, over my content. But it sure had influence as to whether or not I got published at all.

Further, I can remember discussions among colleagues at other newspapers concerning placement of ads and stories. Sometimes it would just be a question of taste: Would you really run a formula ad next to a story about something terrible that happened to a baby? Sometimes it was about content: Do you risk running a story critical of formula next to an ad by a formula maker? Of course, many publishers were willing to alienate advertisers; but we should never pretend that no one debated these issues.

New media people are much more open about business relationships - to wit, this column on TBM and Amazon. The old business model is broken and everyone needs to start throwing out ideas fast about how to create new ones. That conversation in of itself creates more transparency. It's also very exciting to be part of something new, to engage in chatter that leads to destinations unknown.

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