Quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by taustin View Post
What people really want is to see no ads at all. But they're not willing to pay for the services that are currently free becaus they're ad supported.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jgaiser
Wait... What? If the services are free, the services are free. If the owner thinks the service is *worth* something he can charge a fee.
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As is often the case, in actuality the service is likely to be "free to the end user,
but paid for by others. This is the formula used by the Amazon Affiliate system, and many (or most) of the "free" services and information sites around the web. In this instance, the owner does "charge a fee", you just don't see it or pay it directly-- you pay it indirectly (or the ultimately financially-benefiting site pays it).
To get this off the Amazon/affiliate "hot button" for a moment, look at Google's search engine. It's free to the user, but indirectly paid for through the user's action, and others' profits. You certainly have the right to block and/or ignore every ad (and income producing) link in Google, and personally use the service for free. I can assure you that if everyone exercised that right completely and effectively, we would
all be living without Google Search.
Back on topic, the "owner"
does think the service is worth something, (and so does Amazon, the true "buyer" of the service). What it's worth is based on a formula offered by Amazon, and either accepted or rejected as acceptable compensation by the owner of the site.
Amazon has unilaterally changed the terms (which they are allowed to do). It seems likely that it may damage the site owner's capability of figuring out a working "
paid for by others" model. There's no doubt that Amazon intends to damage the "bad affiliates", but it's questionable whether they've figured out how to maintain the "good affiliates".