Affiliate Text Links

  • Unknown's avatar
    achaffey · Member ·

    I know this is a topic that has come up before but searching through the forums and elsewhere has gotten me some conflicting information.

    I want to make sure if I’m understanding the affiliate linking policy correctly and would like confirmation as to whether a certain scenario is acceptable.

    If I am understanding it correctly, TEXT links to affiliates are acceptable in posts and pages as long as it is a ‘real’ blog with lots of original content. IMAGE links to affiliates are NOT acceptable under any circumstances. Is this correct?

    As for the specific scenario I would like feedback on, I am interested in starting a free blog about anime and manga, that would include all kinds of different content like reviews, commentary, links to videos, etc. Occasionally I would want to review a specific collectible or box set and would like to include a text-only link to the product on an affiliate site. As I understand it this should be acceptable. However, I would also like to include a page of ‘Recommended Links’ that would all be text only. They would not all be affiliate links, as I would include other anime and manga information sites, but would it be acceptable to also include some affiliate links here?

    I would like to know before I go ahead and start building the blog as I’ve seen it mentioned in the forums here and elsewhere that wordpress could shut down your blog with no chance for you to recover all of your work if you violate the policy about affiliate linking.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • staff-doublebassd · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    Policy on affiliate links have changed over the years, but here is the most recent policy:

    We do allow sites to use affiliate links, in any form such as text or images. We also do allow sponsored post and paid for ads that are relevant to the content on your site.

    However, we do not allow sites whose primary purpose is to drive traffic to external affiliate links or who promote their site or affiliate links through comment and forum spam. So, if we see a site with poor quality content and a whole bunch of Amazon affiliate images, for example, that would be considered spam – which is against our Terms of Service.

    For information on what is and isn’t allowed, please visit our support page:

    Monetize Your Site

    Although you can monetize your blog using affiliate text links, we do not allow affiliate links to the following types of sites:

    • “Get Rich Quick”/Work from Home
    • Multi-level marketing (MLM)
    • Gambling
    • Pornography
    • Disreputable merchants and affiliate networks (ex. Clickbank)

    For more information, please visit our support page:
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/affiliate-links/

    We do have an advertising program called WordAds, which you can read more about here:

    WordAds

    Advertising from third-party ad networks like Google AdSense is not allowed. For full details, please see:

    Monetize Your Site

    http://wordpress.com/types-of-blogs/

    If you require other advertising, you might be interested in a self-hosted (WordPress.org) installation. There are no restrictions on advertising if you setup a self-hosted WordPress.org blog instead of a WordPress.com blog, but there are some added responsibilities. Please see this link to learn about the differences:

    WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org

    We have hosting recommendations at the following link if you are interested:

    Hosting

    However, to answer your last question, I think what you would want to do with your site is fine and is within our Terms of Service.

    Thanks!

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