Are We Affiliate Marketing Hypocrites

Shane (from DomainShane.com) left a good comment on a post I did earlier today (The Art Of SEO) about using affiliate links in blog posts and the risk of starting to seem like an affiliate marketer and then no one believing what you have to say anymore. He was not saying that I was necassarily doing that but did mention that people do start to be turned off when affiliate links are used.

I get that, and funny enough recently I even went back to some old posts and removed affiliate links to certain products that I do not actually use (or use no longer) so it was funny to think about how that relates to a post I did where I actually believed in the products I had links too. (Before you start looking I am sure there are some stragglers left but I did try to remove those from products I do not use).

Are we hypocrites when it comes to affiliate links? We as domainers and web developers like to talk about monetizing our traffic, etc but when we see one of our own actually make money off of something they actually used and recommended why do we complain. I have to be honest I have actually had the same thought when I went to other peoples blogs and realized we are a bit hypocritical when we dismiss domain bloggers for having affiliate links in their posts.

The funny part is that the money I make off affiliates is so low because I really do not use them all that much, most of the advertisers on my blog are paid spots, there are some affiliate spots but all of them are actually products or services I use.

So, is it wrong to actually profit from content that I, or other bloggers, generate (for free) when I actually believe in a product, is it wrong for a fellow blogger to benefit from affiliate links on their blog?

I guess what I am saying is that with all the talk about monetizing traffic most of us have sites out there with affiliate revenue coming from them and I guarantee that most of us have never used the products on those sites so why is it wrong for a blogger when they actually believe in the product?

This post is not really about me or my specific post, it just brought up some hypocrisy that I have had happen a couple times, my Hostgator post about upgrading servers and the great service I got from them also had the same conversation come up. Weird that people think it is wrong to have affiliate links in when you are actually saying things you experienced but they do not have a problem with it on sites they have developed themselves when they have not used the products.