I can't shake the feeling that this "content," which is effectively a new form of infomercial, will not be taken seriously by the public. How can you guarantee the author's integrity when they're working on commission? With ad supported content, the ad is not chosen by the author.
I'd prefer transparent compensation (affiliate links) across every product someone writes about, vs. seeing articles where they may or may not be compensation behind the scenes on some products.
The worst thing would be "these are the top 5 9mm handguns" where you include Sig, Beretta, S&W M&P, Glock, and Hi-Point, due to Hi-Point paying you for associating them with 4 quality manufacturers. I'd have no problem with "these are my favorite guns from my collection" where if you buy any of them, I get affiliate 0.$$, particularly if that part is transparent.
It's even better when you declare that you're donating all the affiliate money to charity (which I did, on my refer.ly experiments, and I think dmor did too).
The big problem with existing media is not hidden commercial bias but just straight incompetence. If giving people 5% sales commissions solves that, that's a net win over keeping them disinterested.
Without affiliate links, people write about products out of a passion for the product. With affiliate links, you also get people copywriting to get paid. In fact, whenever I see affilate compensation I assume a professional copywriter, though that may change in the future. So before referral links, the average quality of reviews should higher even if the volume were lower. Imagine amazon.com with all-affiliate reviews. It would drastically decrease the usefulness of the site, because the content would no longer be written by people I can relate to, but by pros, most of which could sell ice to Eskimos.
In shoet, I would prefer no monetary incentives to keep the web amateur. I don't want to have to filter every blog post I read through a "Am I being scammed?" filter.
No monetary incentives would be different from what we have now. The choice (at scale) is essentially "transparent economic incentives" (affiliates) vs. concealed economic incentives (paid products, sponsorships, behind the scenes promotion deals)..
I think there are probably people who write reviews/promote their favorite products at a small scale, but not the larger blogs.
Possibly. I see the larger sites supported by ads. With ads, you get paid regardless of whether the review is positive or negative. With affiliate links, you only bet paid if people buy.
I personally think of Referly the same way -- I think the model of affiliate payouts directly to the content creators is going to fail. I view it as a really easy/nice way to create lists and editorial value, with the money going to Referly to operate the system.
The amounts of money which go to people seem so low as to be pointless (i.e. I'll help my friend move for free, but I'd be insulted if he offered me $5 for 3 hours. However, free pizza would be a plus). I don't know how Referly could turn the money into "free pizza" instead of $5, though. Anyone making "real" money is more likely to go direct.
If the money goes to Referly and/or charities, that removes the bad incentives, too.
You can't guarantee an author's integrity. Period. Commission doesn't factor into that base case.
Assuming there's full disclosure, one might make the argument that writing on commission would lead an (ethical) author to think even harder about being balanced, since the bias is recorded fact, rather than something the reader has to guess at.
