Links to some merchant sites are now affiliated with Viglink

[NSX Prime]

To pay for things like upgraded hosting I looked around for ways to help the site generate a little more revenue without making it annoying to use. I settled on "affiliating" links to a ton of major online merchants using a service called VigLink. (Anyone who spends their days studying the footers at the bottom of every page on the forum may have already noticed the note to that effect right above the vBulletin copyright block.)

Anyway, since it's new and isn't really visible to users I wanted to take a second to explain a bit about it.

Q: How does it work?
A: Someone posts a link in a message to a participating merchant site (e.g. amazon.com). Then if people read the message and click the link to the merchant site and make a purchase, this site gets part of an affiliate commission (VigLink keeps the rest - their angle is they handle the affiliation with thousands of sites so website owners only have to deal with one company).

Q: How does it change the experiencing of using this website?
A: It doesn't, really. Everything happens behind the scenes. It doesn't change the links, it doesn't change anything on the merchant site when you visit, etc. The fact that it has no impact on the user experience is the main reason I picked it.

If you have any more questions fire away and I'll do my best to answer them, or find out the answer if I don't know.

And hey, wouldn't this be a great time for someone to start a "Link your best Christmas present ideas!" thread in Off Topic? :wink: :biggrin:

 

[Stephen@NCAutoUSA]

I know it's been brought up many times but maybe somehow we can get members that use this site religiously to donate or to limit their postings.

I'm all for a private viewing section, but there can be something else done maybe to help you out?

It actually infuriates me when I see "certain" prime members using this site with 3000 posts only joining a few years ago and don't even donate a penny.

 

[heySkippy]

Q: How does it change the experiencing of using this website?
A: It doesn't, really. Everything happens behind the scenes. It doesn't change the links, it doesn't change anything on the merchant site when you visit, etc. The fact that it has no impact on the user experience is the main reason I picked it.

As I understand it, the exception is people who post their own affiliate links. Those will no longer work for the poster.

 

[NSX Prime]

I know it's been brought up many times but maybe somehow we can get members that use this site religiously to donate or to limit their postings.

I'm all for a private viewing section, but there can be something else done maybe to help you out?

It actually infuriates me when I see "certain" prime members using this site with 3000 posts only joining a few years ago and don't even donate a penny.

I know a fair number of members who have donated money the site share your feelings and I understand the sentiment. There are also members who have contributed both by making a lot of good post contributions over the years as well as donating money who hold a different viewpoint.

My view, which I've stated here and there when the topic has come up over the years, is that I don't wish to create two classes of users on the site or judge people on this issue.

On a related note, a lot of people have suggested I charge vendors to sell stuff here, as most similar sites do. I know many sites generate quite a bit of revenue from this, but I don't really want to go down that route for a number of reasons. First, it adds another thing to administer. Second, I don't have a good idea how to implement it cleanly in a way that doesn't discourage the small part-time enthusiast vendors (regular NSX owners making some small mod or part which benefits the community). And finally because then I'm selling something and that means I have some new level of commitment and responsibility to people who are now my customers.

However, it is increasingly bothering me that some vendors have been moving a large dollar volume of product through this site for a long time without donating anything back. So if the private members who have contributed financially to support the site want to bug someone else to contribute, maybe you could put a little pressure on some of the vendors who clearly sell a ton of stuff on the site yet still have "Registered User" titles. :wink:

 

[NSX Prime]

As I understand it, the exception is people who post their own affiliate links. Those will no longer work for the poster.

That is an interesting point which I had not even considered.

There is an option in my VigLink account to over-ride links that are already affiliated and re-affiliate them to my VigLink account. It was turned off by default. Since I didn't have any other affiliate programs running, I didn't turn it on when I set everything up. As I said, it didn't really occur to me that other people may have been posting affiliate links on my site. But now that you mention it, it seems obvious and I wouldn't be surprised if that has been happening.

But unless I enable that option for my account, I'm not really sure if it will re-affiliate links members post. It sounds like I have to turn that on for that to happen. I guess I'd need to submit a support inquiry to find out for sure. Before I do that, let me ask this: Assuming it does work that way, is there any reason I shouldn't re-affiliate links?

 

[heySkippy]

My experience is from another site I frequent where it was discovered by the users that their links were being re-affiliated without any notice. Management there never mentioned being able to turn that off, so that's news to me.

I wouldn't have any problem with it though.

 

[HIJACKER]

I know a fair number of members who have donated money the site share your feelings and I understand the sentiment. There are also members who have contributed both by making a lot of good post contributions over the years as well as donating money who hold a different viewpoint.

My view, which I've stated here and there when the topic has come up over the years, is that I don't wish to create two classes of users on the site or judge people on this issue.

On a related note, a lot of people have suggested I charge vendors to sell stuff here, as most similar sites do. I know many sites generate quite a bit of revenue from this, but I don't really want to go down that route for a number of reasons. First, it adds another thing to administer. Second, I don't have a good idea how to implement it cleanly in a way that doesn't discourage the small part-time enthusiast vendors (regular NSX owners making some small mod or part which benefits the community). And finally because then I'm selling something and that means I have some new level of commitment and responsibility to people who are now my customers.

However, it is increasingly bothering me that some vendors have been moving a large dollar volume of product through this site for a long time without donating anything back. So if the private members who have contributed financially to support the site want to bug someone else to contribute, maybe you could put a little pressure on some of the vendors who clearly sell a ton of stuff on the site yet still have "Registered User" titles. :wink:

Regarding vendors, here's what I've seen before, managed before on another forum, and it seemed to have worked fine.

The registered vendors who actually pay, receive a top level forum called VENDOR Sales - Name of Vendor, and they have limited moderation control on that forum (ability to edit titles, etc.). This gives the ability to organize all vendor posts specific to that vendor in one section for easy viewing/searching, gives them additional control, and top level access for prime advertising.

The hobbyists who choose to create one off products for retail sale, would be confined to Vendor - Other/Misc, where any non-paying vendor would remain.

So, the layout could essentially look like this:

CompanyA (small thin banner)
CompanyB (small thin banner)
CompanyC (small thin banner)
Vendor Sales - Other
NSX Parts For Sale
NSX Parts Wanted
NSXs For Sale
NSXs Wanted
Buyer, Seller & Vendor Experiences

Also, random thought - I still believe that both the NSXs For Sale and NSXs Wanted should each have two subforums, 91-01, and 02-05, similar to how they organize things on the MR2 Forums between Gen1 and Gen 2, for 85-89 and 91-95.

 

[heySkippy]

I like the way it's done at ars technica. The technical forums are open and free to all. The off-topic forums are readable by all, but you have to be a paying subscriber to post.

 

[queenlives]

I like the way it's done at ars technica. The technical forums are open and free to all. The off-topic forums are readable by all, but you have to be a paying subscriber to post.

hmmm, interesting approach.

 

[Stephen@NCAutoUSA]

I like the way it's done at ars technica. The technical forums are open and free to all. The off-topic forums are readable by all, but you have to be a paying subscriber to post.

That's actually quite brilliant. Even if it's a small amount of $5 or something.

I don't know the actual rate or how many prime members we have but let's just say you get 50 new users in a month and they all post so 50x$5=$250. Out of those 50 users "I'll be generous here" 5 donate $20's. It doesn't have to change for the already registered users and it could be as low as you want it to be.

The only problem with that is that it deters the want to contribute more down the line because the mentality would be "oh, I already donated".

 

[docjohn]

I think the key point Lud made is the toughest to get around in theory.A free site allows the admins less implied responsability.Despite the best intentions of building in a pay to play forum for sellers once you have payed for something the expectations of the site will rise and who knows what silly legal BS could arise from some of the crazy people out there.

 

[DocL]

I'm all for a pay to read/post subfourm. If Lud wants to grandfather in those who have already contributed, then great. Otherwise a nominal fee of $10-$20 wouldn't hurt any of our pockets for a yearly fee. I would be nice if people who sell a product or service also donated, but how do you make a fee schedule that is fair. I think that any vendor who has a legal registered business should have to pay a vendor fee per year. I don't see how doing so would Lud responsible. It s just like any other marketing strategy.

 

[NSX Prime]

My experience is from another site I frequent where it was discovered by the users that their links were being re-affiliated without any notice.

The reason I started this thread was because I wanted everyone to know exactly what I was doing and why. I try to operate the site with reasonable transparency.

Management there never mentioned being able to turn that off, so that's news to me.

I guess I need to be clear that I'm not sure that's how it works, just that it sounds that way based on the description.

Anyway, I just enabled the feature to re-affliate links since I don't have any other affiliate programs running and nobody spoke up regarding concerns about re-affiliating their affiliate links.


ALSO, I turned on another VigLink feature to test it out. It is called "Link Insertion." Here is an excerpt from the description:

...automatically insert new links in your website when they see references to brands, merchants and (coming soon) products...

So in theory if I just write the word ebay in this post it should get turned into an affiliated link when people view it, then if someone clicks that link and buys something I may get a commission. I'm not sure how it decides or calculates that, but I figure a chance to be something is greater than the nothing I get now. Haha.

NOTE: This is treading closer to the kind of monetization I find really annoying on web sites, and I'm sure some others here are of a similar mind. For example, the ad programs that underline key words and pop up an ad when your mouse pointer rolls over them really piss me off, so I don't use them here. This is a few steps removed from that level of distraction, but let me be clear this is only a TEST because I wanted to see how it works. If it annoys you, post some feedback. If it annoys me, or if it annoys a lot of users, I'll definitely turn it off.


EDIT: Yes, it created and affiliated not only the link to ebay, but also to itself! And it is retroactive since it takes place when the page is viewed, so even my first post in the thread is now linked. Interesting. If you hover your mouse over them it explains that VigLink affiliated them. So at least the system is transparent about what is going on. It seems to add some delay to the page loading, which I'm not a fan of at all. I'll give it a few days and see how it behaves in normal threads on the site. I wonder if there is a way to exclude a bit of text from being linked. That would be a nice feature. Anyway, please give me some feedback so I'm not making these decisions in a vacuum!

 

[NSX Prime]

ALSO, I turned on another VigLink feature to test it out. It is called "Link Insertion."
. . .
If it annoys me, or if it annoys a lot of users, I'll definitely turn it off.

I'm turned off Link Insertion. I never got any feedback from users, but I found it annoying.