Personally, I prefer not to use any project that has no way to make money. Life is expensive and time consuming. Projects require at least a little time and money. If that isn't reimbursed in any way, the rest of life will nearly always take precedent at some point. Affiliate links seem like a good way to solve this. I don't see where the conflict of interest lies.
I want myself and others to contribute because of the desire to contribute. I don't want to bring affiliates into the equation lest it brings the wrong incentives (however glimmering it may be).
I'm honestly curious how you envision that affiliate links might create the wrong incentives. There are other ways to make money, but the ones I can think of seem much worse. Advertising sucks and clearly has more wrong incentive problems. Donations are less predictable and disconnected from the usefulness of the site. It seems to me that getting a small cut of "hey this book does look useful, I think I'll buy it!" is as well-aligned as it gets. But I'm interested in your thoughts on this!
I don't get your point about affiliate links at all. What better ad is there than a link to a recommended book itself? I'd much rather see you get a small portion of the purchase price of a book you recommended to me than look at your ads, curated or not.
But it's your site! I hope you do find success with the ad strategy, your site seems useful, and I hope it remains worth your time.
You have the same incentive to prioritize ads over recommendations. If I trust you to keep ads clearly separated, I also trust you to keep recommendations undiluted.
> You have the same incentive to prioritize ads over recommendations.
No.
> If I trust you to keep ads clearly separated, I also trust you to keep recommendations undiluted.
True. I am the one curator at the moment. I'll open this so that others can curate / recommend. I require that dilution of intention doesn't happen then. DNA is important.
Philanthropy is great when it's done by independently wealthy people. If that's who the author of this project is, then that's great and I've misjudged this. But that's not usually the case. The majority of mildly useful little unmonetized projects are not made by independently wealthy folks, they are made by (usually younger) folks who are optimistic and whose expenses and responsibilities have not yet accumulated. I don't mean to be a debbie downer - fun little projects are great - I'm just saying that I don't associate something unmonetized with "great! this is altruistic!", I associate it with "bummer, this will probably not be sustained", and when I come across something with a natural and well-aligned monetization scheme, I feel positively about it and am more likely to use it.
