I’ve been wanting to do this write-up for a while. I see a lot of misunderstandings about affiliate links across the internet, and one I see a lot is that sites or people who use them are grifters. I wanted to address that, specifically. Affiliate links by themselves are not shady, and as long as a publisher or media company discloses they use them, I think it constitutes a fair and reasonable way to fund projects. Allow me to explain.

What are affiliate links?

Just as the name describes, affiliate links are URLs or inline links filtered through an affiliate network to help generate a steady form of income. Most of the networks will pay publishers, influencers and content creators minimal fees when visitors click on a link (called PPC or pay per click) or when they buy something through a small commission. Retailers and sellers do not increase the cost or price of their products to make up for affiliate sales. That means the impact to you as a consumer is negligent. You pay the same prices, you don’t pay any extra in fees or shipping, and you don’t pay anything to the affiliate publishers. The networks make those payouts.

Virtually all retailers, product manufacturers, and brands use some form of affiliate marketing. Either they have their own direct network or they use a larger network like Sovrn or AvantLink. It’s not rare, and you’ve definitely clicked on affiliate links in the past and maybe even purchased products using them. All of the big publishers use affiliate links. I won’t name them, but if they’re a digital publication, they use affiliates. YouTube content creators use affiliate links, and that’s why you always hear them asking you to buy through their links. So, do content creators across other social media networks, TikTokers, Pinterest board makers, Instagram creators, you name it.

How do affiliate networks affect everyone?

Generally speaking, they don’t affect you at all. Clicking on an affiliate link is like using a regular old clean link. The biggest difference is that the links are likely used to track your activity, but not yours personally, in a more general sense. Brands use the tracking info to discern what people are interested in, what they’re buying and where they come from. That’s about it. That could be shady if it’s not being disclosed, but also affiliate networks don’t always use data in this way and don’t always track the traffic coming and going. Not to mention, if you use browsers like Brave or Firefox, they can interrupt these trackers in various ways.

So, if they don’t do much, why use them? Affiliate links are also used for vanity. A regular affiliate link will look something like this: “website_dot_com://the-name-of-the-product-youre-looking-at/?the-affiliate-partner-tag-abunchofnonsensesymbols.”

Try to imagine how annoying it would be to copy and paste links like that. So, affiliate networks and tools often shorten the link to something much easier to work with. Like this: “https://amzn.to/3G0yGPW/.”

It’s not to disguise the link. In fact, most affiliate networks include their site or network name in the links themselves. If you know what you’re looking at, they’re an easy thing to spot. Every affiliate has a unique ID or identifier. When you click on a link or purchase a product, that ID tells the network or the seller who referred you. It’s really that simple.

Does Techigar use affiliate links?

Of course, but we also disclose that we do — check the site footer. This is a way to make a little extra money to pay for the website, hosting, and the time put into content creation. Maybe it will happen someday, but we do not make millions. We make cents. We don’t make money on every click or every sale, only authorized ones. The payouts are minimal if and when they even happen. We also don’t include affiliate links on every single product or potential opportunity. Sometimes, the brand is not part of a network we use and it’s not worth the hassle to sign up. We don’t center our coverage around affiliate links either. Meaning, we don’t pick products merely based on the availability of an affiliate link. We cover what we find interesting and, if it happens to have an affiliation opportunity, excellent.

There’s no greedy suit-wearing CEO behind this site. For now, I’m just one guy who loves writing about tech, cigars, and similar topics. I suspect that will always be the case. I don’t have aspirations to run some big media conglomerate. I would love to make enough from my sites to sustain my work and gain some flexibility, but I’m not concerned with get-rich-quick schemes. It takes time to build great things, and that’s true of building an audience for content sites such as Techigar.

I’m just like you and I wanted to make that clear. That won’t change.

Affiliate links help support smaller publishers like Techigar, but it’s the big publishers that take the biggest chunk of the pie. They have a lot more traffic, a lot more visitors and a lot more clicks.