The Plague of Influencers and Affiliate Programs

I’m fresh off of a tirade writing about WBW elsewhere and the stupid affiliate programs all over the place leading to Jabronis (my opinion) pretending that they know something or “have a new favorite” only to put up a revenue token link and never just level with audiences and say “listen, I really only put this video up because when you click on this link, I get a temporary window of a day or two where you buy anything from the retailer and I get money from it.”.

And, of course, it’s not just WBW – it’s every other no accomplishment or mediocre accomplishment person showing their new favorite this or that or a supposed “test” result that just allows linking a whole gaggle of affiliate links at once.

What a plague all of that stuff is. Wood Whisperer telling you about his new favorite rust protection? The revenue link corresponds with the company boasting about a 20% affiliate commission, while the presenter tells you “he bought the product” in a lot of cases, which is misleading. My opinion is that it’s intentional – you would probably get far more than 5 additional sales (erasing your cost) by implying that you just chanced upon something and omitting you’re getting a huge affiliate commission.

It’s pretty much nematodes and tardigrades in the world of woodworking, though. Everywhere and permanent. You don’t immediately see it, but the whole system is set up to create separation between you and retailers or manufacturers while implying that the transition person laundering the information is impartial or “a friend”. A friendly person who never manages to tell you their actual incentive, or recommend things from a full menu of choices without bias in their wallet’s favor.

How do you tell? This isn’t the acid test, but I’ll tell you a story and then tell you one of the acid tests. My dad is retired. He doesn’t do much for investing, aside from give someone his money. He leaked to me a few years ago that he was going to talk to a financial advisor. My dad also gets more pension and social security income than he spends by a wide margin (he’s cheap), so the last thing he needs is an annuity. I said “make sure you don’t do something stupid like buy an annuity that you’re being sold just because it’s far more profitable for an advisor than it would be for them to collect a fee and direct you toward index investments”. His response was “I don’t think he’ll try to do that, I already bought two annuities from him”. A-hole alert. You won’t know enough to know my dad’s financial situation, but I do – no independent advisor is acting in my dad’s interest doing that and my dad could be protected by elder law at his age. He insisted that the advisor is very friendly and has a lot of clients and they all like him. Well, his advisor definitely was successful ad curating a group of clients who aren’t investment savvy and judge advice by smile and whether or not there is free stuff like coffee.

I said “the guy is an A-hole and he should be prosecuted if he’s your financial advisor and not a captive insurance agent or someone who you’d clearly know only wants to sell annuities”. My dad was offended, obviously I’m implying he’s been had and he wasn’t aware of commissions or the idea of annuity income when you’re already unable to spend the income you have. I said “OK, here’s your asshole test. If he tries to sell you another annuity, you’ll know he’s an asshole if you don’t already. I’m telling you ahead of time. It’s pretty easy to smile and give someone coffee if you’re bagging a $5k commission for an hour sitdown”.

I had to break through what my dad felt was a good trusted relationship, and suddenly he had to be whatever pilled you would call it where he understood what was going on, and not only did it put a cloud over him for going to the meeting, or potentially, it made him feel stupid, and while he’s not the same kind of “questioning and digging asshole that I am” (a whole different kind of a-hole!!). Nobody likes to hear, either, that they could be protected by elder law prosecution, because that’s code for “you’re senile and dumb” to a lot of people.

My dad was unhappy with me, audibly, and I value my relationship with my dad a lot. He is rock solid and I would trade him for nobody else. Later that night, he called and he’d gotten enough time to get a little removed from knowing that his son can be inconsiderate or impolite when it comes to lining out something that’s a problem with principle, and he said “Well, I just wanted to call and let you know. You’re right. He tried to sell me an annuity. He said it returns 8%, so what’s your son’s problem?”. I had given him a no-authority order tell the advisor to call me and why – tell him I want to have him call me, what I do for a day job, and I want him to explain why a financial advisor or planner would recommend an annuity. I used something from my secret underground and estimated the cost of an annuity for someone his age and found the yield to be around 2% after expenses. The payment was about 8% per year of the single premium for the annuity. Of course, his advisor was an A-hole, and gave him the fake act of “sure, I’m going to call your son and explain it to him”. Of course, the guy never called, and my dad later called him and he said “he changed his mind”.

Would this have really hurt my dad? No, he’d still have more money than he could spend, but it’s an issue on principle. I have no clue if I’ll get an inheritance and don’t plan for it and don’t really care – it’s my dad’s choice, and I explained to him that if he found a worthwhile charity, I’d rather he give 100% of his money to the charity than will me anything while giving half of his money to an advisor who misled him. And my dad proudly announced I wouldn’t have to worry about that because his advisor (late 40s in age) had sold his company and was retiring.

That’s a long story, but if I could influence a few people to bust that kind of crook, it’d be worth it without question.

Back to influencers. How do you tell someone is an A-hole? My definition. They provide you with information about their “favorite thing”, a “test of various products”, “secret tips” or anything else, and what they’re discussing includes some combination of links to amazon with the word “redir” or “token” on it, and possibly direct links to the products they’re talking about with more in the URL when you hover over the link than just the base website of the maker.

You have every right to ask them how much the commission is on what they’re talking about, and why they don’t disclose affiliate program details as part of talking about something. Just saying “i might get a small commission on some things sometimes” isn’t enough. It’s avoiding the subject, and the information should be specific about the video and about what’s provided. Why doesn’t the Wood Whisperer go nuts telling you about all of the various ways he’ll earn affiliate commissions on a video that purports to be a test about various hard wax oils? Simple, because if he did, many would start to think a little longer, and more folks would probably do what I do – request Youtube eliminate suggesting videos from “creators”, one by one, if the videos have revenue token links or sponsorships and the presenter doesn’t make a pretty big deal about what they’re getting from all of that.

You can certainly decide that I’m just a grouchy rotten person who is peeing on campfires, and I think that’s fine. I’m not really that big on telling people what to do, but rather floating some information out there. I can guarantee you when you are the kind of a-hole that I am (operating on principle, even when it just seems really negative sometimes), people will have the same feeling my dad did. “But I liked that guy”.

What got me on this today? I upset someone who was recommending “carbon method” rust preventive because the wood whisperer recommended it. I didn’t know anything about it other than that it makes little sense as a rust preventive and the wood whisperer figured that even though he used it and got rust on his table saw, it would be worth making another video about it and saying he still liked it. Why do I think he made the video? Well, a good starting guess would be the publicly advertised 20% affiliate commission, though we don’t know what WW’s link token really gets him. It could be more, or it could be less. I doubt the latter, but who knows – I’ve seen online retailers get short arms when someone is especially good at referring people to them, and change the terms of an affiliate program. I have a special distaste in this case, because the person who was glowing about the video and passing it along to other people made the very big pronouncement “well, he said he bought it on his own”. Well, here’s a potential scenario for everyone to think about. You are an influencer, you find a product that has a 20% affiliate commission and you buy it hoping that you can get it in a video and then perhaps get a relationship that’s even a little more special than that. Do you think influencers might be more interested in shopping affiliate programs than products? I do. You may disagree.

But I think if you start to observe this pattern, and you’re aware of it, you may start to change your opinions just as my dad now is fully comfortable that his advisor was an A-hole and he’s more comfortable that I’m not calling him dumb for being taken on investment decisions he signed off on.

Today, I learned that WBW tested some new irons and he’s impressed by them. Guess what. There’s an affiliate link to what he’s talking about for at least one of the products. I bought one of the same iron (the 10V iron tested here). I have no idea what to do with it – the alloy seems to have potential but it doesn’t pan out used side by side with simpler steels because of the way the edge is as it wears. Did I pay for it? yes. Did I ever refer anyone to collect something from the site’s affiliate program? Absolutely not. Did I ever do that anywhere on any platform with anything? Absolutely not.

Different person, same site, with an upbeat pleased feeling to be passing the information along from the video. I think they probably aren’t considering why the video was made in the first place. A link to the right for a recommended short let me know that WBW also has a new favorite marking knife. It’s $120 and made out of about $3 of Nitro V steel….he boasted that in 6 months, he hadn’t had to sharpen it. Nitro V steel wears about as long as A2 – it’s pretty easy to keep a pristine edge on a tool if all you need it for is to make a video to collect revenue through an affiliate token. Guess what the description of the video had in it – a reference token to the site to buy the knife. What do the people who are the viewer version of my dad at the advisor’s office get out of the video? A guy they like has a new favorite marking knife that lasts forever compared to other knives (it won’t – there’s no shortage of catra and toughness testing information for the steel alloy – it’s basically a variation of AEB-L steel, itself being very cheap), and since the video shows such a large number of other knives, it implies that this commission-yielding marking knife is unique. I don’t know what the token link sends back to the video creator – maybe in affiliate interest it is. Maybe it’s not that high of a commission and just another day at the office. I don’t think most people stop to think “maybe this is about generating commission revenue in the first place”, or want to learn more about the steel to find out if it’s really long wearing and really expensive, or if it’s just a very expensive marking knife made out of fairly common materials.

I named a couple of “creators” here – it’s awkward. That should not be confused with me saying these are the two worse or that there aren’t 2000 of the same thing. I’d bet you could find your favorite alcohol infused flying bugs to be doing the same thing, and just about everyone else. Left behind are the videos from people like Curtis Buchanan – actually telling you things that will make you want to go to the shop to do more than open a box and then lose interest and go buy something else.