Added Affiliate Links - VigLink

[Alex]

Howdy -

I set up a small plug-in to create affiliate links for those links posted here that go out to online stores. It shouldn't affect much of anything in the user experience here, but I posted it up so people could be aware if something was working weirdly, and hopefully post reports here.

The way it works is if anyone puts a link up to somewhere ebay, Amazon, Apple, or a whole pile of other sites, the outbound link (the moment you click it) gets a unique code appended to it saying that it came from ninjette.org. The affiliate program on that site says "a-ha, that click came from those good folks over at ninjette.org!", and they pay Viglink a (very small) amount of money for that traffic to get to their site, and a slightly larger amount of money if you end up buying something from that site. Viglink keeps a portion of that money as a service fee, and hands over the rest to this site. Some websites are evidently making multiples of what their adsense revenues are. On other sites, not so much. We'll see how it goes.

The hope and expectation is that this is completely transparent, and doesn't affect anyone's usage of this site. What it does allow is for the site to make a bit more $ without adding any additional visible advertising, which I'm quite conscious of being annoying on many websites.

I chose viglinks over skimlinks based on a bunch of online reviews, and I'll see how it goes for a few weeks.

- Alex

[alex.s]

can we install VagLink?

[Alex]

Surprisingly, that's a real site.

And yes, it's completely work-safe.

http://www.vaglinks.com/

[alex.s]

bahahahahahahaha

[Alex]

I added two new subforums in the marketplace area today, to try and support this affiliate process a bit. The subforums pull in an automated feed from eBay for ninja 300 and ninja 250 items. I set a minimum price for items at $25. The postings in those subforums do not show up in the unread posts count, or in the unanswered threads searches; they are excluded just like the moto-news automated posts are excluded. Hopefully this keeps it from being overly obnoxious to those who couldn't care less, but for those who do choose to browse those subforums, it's a quick way to see some relevant items. Let's see how it goes...

[Jiggles]

Here's the annoying thing though

sears bikes

is that intended?

[Jiggles]

It turns regular words into hyperlinks, thats supposed to happen?

[csmith12]

Originally Posted by Jiggles

It turns regular words into hyperlinks, thats supposed to happen?

I see no hyperlinks that are out of place. You must have a toolbar or malware yo. Scan your stuff STAT!

[Jiggles]

[THE BIG SITT]

Originally Posted by Jiggles

Who else checked to see if he had any porn tabs?

[Jiggles]

Originally Posted by THE BIG SITT

Who else checked to see if he had any porn tabs?

and if I did?

[csmith12]

Originally Posted by THE BIG SITT

Who else checked to see if he had any porn tabs?

[THE BIG SITT]

I would have asked for a link.

[Jiggles]

spankwire

Lots of top notch gay porn, you'd love it

[THE BIG SITT]

Seen better; Seen worse.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Jiggles

It turns regular words into hyperlinks, thats supposed to happen?

It adds info to existing links. It can also create links where none existed before. Those two capabilities are separate, and we don't have to do both. Right now both of those are enabled. As of now, 90%+ of the revenue is coming from the existing links rather than the created ones, so if that holds long-term I'd consider disabling that second part of the functionality.

[Joshorilla]

I don't like it, simply because I believe somebody has added a hyperlink to their post and it's not by them and there is no way to tell so it feels like a deceptive way of trying to sell something by passing it off as something somebody intended to put in their post.

It feels a bit like a violation of what I am posting also.

But hey, if it's a good revenue stream then I have no objections, babys gotta eat!

[Jiggles]

Originally Posted by alex.s

here's how i see it, nicky

your dad supported your hobby extremely well and was very supportive. he wanted to take out the bike he paid for, because ****, who wouldn't? he made a mistake and the consequences were tiny. now you're all pissy because you felt like you were entitled to the bike because you put some work and money into it and that he had no right to use it and crash it. if i was close enough, i'd smack you in the head. bikes crash. money is meaningless. your father is blood and can't be replaced. you shouldn't give a **** about some stupid piece of metal and plastic. if anything, its an excuse to get your hands dirty and put some more work into the zx. but your attitude is completely unacceptable. especially in regard to your father. be lucky you still have your father around. it's not a benefit everyone has, and it really is unfortunate how many people take these things for granted. bikes get crashed, nick. its part of the game. if you think you won't crash that zx yourself, you've probably got a surprise coming. so maybe instead of being all pissy and bitchy you can say OK, get to work fixing it, help your dad while he heals, then when things come around you'll be in the plus on karma.

TL;DR: stop being a little bitch, nick. i'm gonna smack you through facebook.

The added links are really annoying, like in this post where alex just says bikes and it links it

It doesn't show it in the quote but check his original post

[alex.s]

i also find the random links for common words confusing

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Joshorilla

I don't like it, simply because I believe somebody has added a hyperlink to their post and it's not by them and there is no way to tell so it feels like a deceptive way of trying to sell something by passing it off as something somebody intended to put in their post.

There is a popup when you mouse over the link that shows it was added by Viglinks, so it's not entirely deceptive. Also - I have it configured so clicking on any of those links opens it up in a new tab or new window, so it doesn't bounce you off of the post you're reading at the moment.

Originally Posted by Jiggles

The added links are really annoying, like in this post where alex just says bikes and it links it

Yes - I can see how some of those seem out of place and not terribly helpful.

[Joshorilla]

It doesn't pop up on the ipad for obvious reasons I guess, which is my primary browsing tool, I spent a good few minutes trying to figure out why motofool was recomending some ****** site for oil filters lol.

[Alex]

Ah - got it. I would have just blamed Motofool.

[THE BIG SITT]

Well that does it. Thanks to VigLink, Ninjette is effed.

[Alex]

That was all it took? I could have effed it up much quicker and easier if I had put my back into it.

Let's give it a week or two and I'll have the necessary data to decide the level of annoying I'm willing to foist on users. If it's pointless, I'll kill it. I think it's less annoying than plastering all of the white space of the page with picture ads, which is why there are so few ad banners on this site. (and an easy setting in people's user control panel to even disable those if people so choose)

[THE BIG SITT]

Originally Posted by Alex

That was all it took? I could have effed it up much quicker and easier if I had put my back into it.

Let's give it a week or two and I'll have the necessary data to decide the level of annoying I'm willing to foist on users. If it's pointless, I'll kill it. I think it's less annoying than plastering all of the white space of the page with picture ads, which is why there are so few ad banners on this site. (and an easy setting in people's user control panel to even disable those if people so choose)

Well gosh, by then, no one will use the site!

I kid; I honestly don't even see the links (I use Safari by the way).

[Alex]

[Joshorilla]

Yeah, I found the setting to disable adds when the only one that showed up was one of a cancerous tumour telling me not to smoke, I don't enjoy seeing cancer tumours while browsing ninjette

[Jiggles]

Originally Posted by Joshorilla

Yeah, I found the setting to disable adds when the only one that showed up was one of a cancerous tumour telling me not to smoke, I don't enjoy seeing cancer tumours while browsing ninjette

Stop googling cigarettes then

[choneofakind]

I'm finding all these random linky things to be annoying.

[Jiggles]

There should be a donation button instead

[Alex]

I looked at the stats as of today. The auto-inserted links were adding about 3% of the revenue (tiny), and the automated linking for existing links was making up the remainder. With that in mind, I turned off the auto-inserted links.

For the ones that have been added already, they might not be removed. But it shouldn't add any new ones going forward.

[psych0hans]

If you make more money, it can't be a bad thing... lol Good Luck!!!

[Alex]

I was a bit tardy in updating the terms of service / privacy policy based on adding this to the site. I've remedied that today (link to TOS on my sig, or at the bottom of every page). In the TOS, there are now direct links to opt-out of the ad programs on the site. There remains a switch in the user control panel to directly turn off the banner ads as well.

[Bob2010]

Is very common among forums. If you own a grandprix, clubgp has been doing this for years now.
I see no problem at all