Hey guys Danielle here. Here's what I think we should do: if it makes commissions we can donate them to Room to Read through our charity program, and I will share all the stats in a blog post. Cool?
Why not just, uh, keep the money? There's nothing wrong with referral links if people keep it reasonable.
How many people here honestly would sacrifice their reputation for a few bucks? The book is genuinely of interest to this community, not just something someone's spamming.
I'm a bit dismayed that as the founder of a service for referral links, you're not a bit more defensive of their use, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding. Offering to donate the money makes it seem like "ill gotten gains".
Good point well made. As to referrals, I didn't realize they needed defending - that is how the Internet, and business in general works, and either Amazon would be keeping that money or it would be in someone else's pocket. The product was absolutely relevant to the audience here, or it never would have made it to the front page and remained for 10+ hours
Since this is my link personally and we have a donate to charity program and fundraising drive going for Room to Read, I am happy to donate. I am more interested in the data than the money in this case and getting $50 in unexpected referrals isn't the key to our business model.
I'm primarily offering the donation to placate the community so the mods won't remove the referral link (in which case I couldn't get the data I need). HN could use our API and a few lines of Javascript to turn every Amazon link into a referral link if they wanted to, and donate to charity. I'll ask PG if he'd be interested
I have less of a problem with comments containing referral links since that's clearly the author's opinions, but I see submissions should have less blatant commercial interest.
HN already frowns upon self-submission of personal blog posts (if it's interesting enough for HN the argument goes, it would be submitted by a 3rd party).
How can I trust a website recommendations from a website like Coding Horror when every Amazon link generates a commission. It's encouragement to sell expensive products rather than more suitable ones.
I generally remove the referral query from URLs when I click through.
