Kickback

Come on now. I support subtle product placements and advertisements (mezzoblue's works well), but you just became a fulltime salesperson for them.

Mike - from what I can tell, a large percentage of people who read this site are web developers who likely use at least one Macromedia product in their daily workflow. I'm simply providing a link just like everyone else does with Amazon books and what-not. I also felt the Macromedia graphic in the side-bar deserved explanation. No biggie.

sooner or later everyone jumps on the money making bandwagon... unfortunate but true... We decieve ourselves that we're doing it for the love of it and will never cave into the advertising commercial forces... Yes, most people use macromedia stuff. but advertisting for them is push the notion of you can't make a webpage without dreamweaver and that there is a buy in... would you be advertising for a free text editor if there were no monetary incentive? I'm not "dissin" you just asking.. Zeldman is even thinking about puting an ad on his site. we deceive ourselves everything has it's price. At least you give full disclosure on this site whatdoiknow.org what is more tricky is when people just post links to amazon for a book or CD and you can look in the status bar that there is a referer but they don't say anything about it on their blog, most people wouldn't know the difference... by full disclosure (even in the sidebar graphic) you are being honest to all of us. that's great! but to offset your guilty feeling (tackypanhandeling) why don't you just mention that you can make just as great webpages with a good text editor and link to a low cost or free one in this post? If you can afford expensive stainless steel lettering for your house you can afford the loss of revenue that posting the text editor link will bring upon you. and you can have the warm and fuzzy feeling of doing it for the greater good as well as getting kickbacks for the people who would have bought macromedia stuff anyways... goodday.

Come on now mike, that little logo doesn't affect you in the slightest.

Todd's culture mining is financially beneficial to me and I would say to you as well. With out him sifting through media, new publications and the web, I would be missing out on major influences to my work and play. Further, this site costs him cash for hosting and maybe extra bandwidth. Granted, I'm sure it has paid him back 10fold with the notoriety it brings, but I still don't understand why would you insist he pay for us to learn and grow?

Freedom of information should not equal leeching.

Sorry, I ment "free information

Is there anyway that I can get educational pricing as well? I work for Fairfield University in Connecticut and we usually buy the Macromedia stuff through one of our vendors - I wonder if I can still get you a kickback?

I'm a big fan of "put up or shut up."

If you're going to bitch about Todd's product placement, offer to pay his hosting for a year. No takers? Yeah, that's what I thought.

great article that I'm in the middle of reading here...

http://daringfireball.net/2003/07/independent_days.html

All this fighting aside, i cant belieive you can buy a Macromedia T-Shirt!

You have no reason to feel as though this is "Tacky pan-handling". You provide a service to me and many others, at no cost. You love Marcromedia's products and mention them almost weekly on your site as it is. If having a link to their site will help you offset costs and [hopefully] motivate you to update your site daily, i am all for it.

Do what you want (obviously you will). It's your site.
Clint

Is it a coincidence that the majority of people talking about "selling out" are teenagers who haven't yet learned the value of money or time? or intelectual property? the "adult version" of selling out is much worse yet the definition is much more strict than the flippant teenager version that they spout out about making themselves feel "more rightous"

How could this qualify as "selling out"? I think Todd is in all his right to put the Macromedia Affiliate link. He's got the traffic, the readers, the "fame" - getting something back should be so obvious. Who wouldn't do? Chances are that, yes, most of his readers are in the webdev business and do use at least one product of the Macromedia line. So what's wrong with that? The average reader of WDIK may use Dreamweaver for HTML pages - but also gets to know his/her handcoding for sure - there's no need to remind them that with an ad for a text editor instead. Most of us do personal sites for pure personal interest and love's sake - however hosting and site maintenance costs (either in terms of money or time) don't come cheap, and anything that can help to ease on this burden should be more than welcome.

Why would this bug anyone??

these aren't porn banners we're talking about here.. it's a link to a site that offers products that Todd uses.

He's giving us free information. F-R-E-E. In return, maybe you click a link or two.

Nice compromise I'd say.

from the article

http://www.mezzoblue.com/cgi-bin/mt/mezzo/archives/000246.asp

Others are making hundreds, if not thousands off of AdSense. -------------It?s tempting to throw in the towel and just go for it to see what results, but I?m still not ready to compromise yet.-------------- (Give me a month of huge overage charges on my hosting plan and watch how quickly I turn to the big ?G?.)

I dont really mind the ad, and yeah if I was going to buy a Macromedia product at full price and I knew of the link i would click through it as I have read Todd's site for months now and I love it. Not a day goes by that I dont hit the link in my favorites list and if theres nothing new Ill start to trawl through the archives.

Its not selling out - is he now asking us to pay a subscription fee? is he making us click the link? No! So why call it selling out... hosting costs aren't cheap, especially for a big, popular site like this one... and if he can get some support through us simply clikcing a link on his site to a product which we were going to buy anyway its no big deal for us, its a single extra page load... whats the problem?

OK, I'll compromise. I don't mind the sidebar link. In fact, i don't scroll down that far usually. But this post just sounded like a full endorsement for Macromedia.

I have a problem with these affiliation programs. You are essentially becoming an employee of Macromedia, so how do we know you will be giving us a non-biased opinion of the technology available to us.

"...Macromedia...have done a fantastic job redesigning their site, and have created one of the best examples of unordered-lists for navigation I have ever seen." --wednesday, aug 27, 2003

Endorsement? Honest opinion?

I'm just trying to make a point. I consider you very honest, knowledgeable, and helpful, but what happens when other people follow your lead. Can i trust them?

I see nothing wrong with endorsing a company's products and getting paid for it.

I go to software demos and training (in person) where the host only gets paid if you buy the products being demonstrated.... otherwise they wasted their time and energy to get you there for you to learn for FREE. I've never heard one outburst from the crowd or seen one stone thrown when the host mentions that you can buy the software through us.

Somehow folks who provide their time and information for free on the web are treated like common whores and are stoned if they put out their hands asking for money. Do those that throw stones reap any reward from the information on this site? Do those who provide good and FREE information not deserve to get ANY compensation?

I really fail to see the conflict of interest.

Granted, I probably do write about Macromedia and Flash too much (I just wrote another Flash-related entry for God's sake), but...that's part of how I make my living. So naturally I'd be regularly writing about both the product and the company. But I can see how the store link could be misinterpreted as a "pitch," but it is included with the most honest of intentions.

ummm Mike H, Todd is being totally honest here, as well as being completely up front, that makes him far more trustworthy in my book. Its not like Macro is paying him to hype their crap without disclosing the fact. No one is free from bias, and the more truthful they are about it the better off you are. So unless you plan on sponsoring the site yourself...

Actually, I find this kind of endorsement much more acceptable than the not-so-subliminal business of brand clothing (Tommy Hilfiger anyone?), which basically turns you into a walking billboard - and noone protests.

Roll Up! Roll Up! Get your pre-ordered copy of Flash MX 2004 at http://affiliates.macromedia.com/t.asp?id=1121&p=go/dr_text_aff

Order now and get a complimentary warm glow, for the knowledge that you helped somebody out. Satisfaction garanteed. No purchase necessary.

Abe said, "No one is free from bias, and the more truthful they are about it the better off you are. "

This may also be one of the reasons why weblogs are becoming more valuable than newsgroups, or why RSS is becoming more valuable than email... whether you read someone depends on their ongoing reputation. When someone can post anonymously -- without investing themself -- you have less context for evaluating their speech.

Mike Hulme wrote, "how do we know you will be giving us a non-biased opinion of the technology available to us." Please, do not take any of us uncritically... run each of us through your own reality-checkers, see how consistent our arguments are, and how well they correspond to what you yourself can see.

Regards,
John Dowdell
Macromedia Support

Todd,

Could you post a link to the educational store with your affiliate code? I'll help you out when I buy the new version of Flash.

1. People read your review on new MM product.
2. You get money, if they click on the store link you provide next to review.
3. If the new MM product is crap, will you be able to write that in your review knowing people might not click on the store link and provide you money to maintain weblog and write next review?
4. If the new MM product is really great and you tell how great it is in your review, how can readers understand the difference with point 3?

Independent opinion vs. salesperson interests.

Todd's record is pretty clear to me. You dont hear him hyping freehand, or fireworks or any of that software. He discusses flash, because nothing out there touches it. He introduces us to products that directly compete with other macromedia products whenever he finds one he likes... as example are a post on a CSS editor, one on BBE, or any number of other posts.

I personally cannot not believe how many negative comments were made here about a guy most of us would trust with an address book filled with our client's home phone numbers.

Todd, I am sure there are more people who read wdik and admire your credibility than not.

See, here's my problem with the old "my time ain't free/this hosting isn't cheap, y'know" argument. And don't for a moment assume that this applies specifically or indeed at all to WhatDoIKnow. Just while the subject's floating around, y'unnerstand.

1. Guy/gal starts up personal site, for the sheer heck of it. No expectations. Just a blog.

2. Guy/gal gets a real buzz when so many people begin to visit *their* site!!

3. Hit rates escalate, guy/gal begins to become a listened-to "voice".

4. Guess what comes next? "Hey, I put so much time into this, the hosting costs ain't cheap blah blah blah".

Too much of a time investment? Stop blogging. Costs getting too high? Kill the site. Start up a new site with less traffic and smaller costs. Or is that unthinkable? Is that not even an option, because the webstats and props from peers are. Just. So. Damn. Addictive.

I have to admit that I've had mixed feelings about the affiliate program too. But we're giving it a try, and the team at macromedia is fairly responsive to requests. In fact, I asked for a smaller and less "flashy" banner, and voila. They made one.

A point worth making: affiliates don't get paid for click-throughs, only for completed sales. So, it's definately more of a gamble than getting paid for banner ads. A smart move on Macromedia's part. And I have considered dropping all but the text link. At GalaxyGoo we've had 1620 banner impressions, 86 click-throughs, and zero commissions.

I don't see what the problem with Todd providing a link to buy Studio MX 2004 is. Were he to provide the link without the profit, woud everyone be happy? So what if he makes a few bucks and it doesn't cost any of us anything. We've been profiting from him (ie his writing), while he's been paying for us. Does giving back a bit hurt?

And to the guy ranting about Zeldman talking about putting an ad on Zeldman.com, well it musn't bother you that much because the ads are already there (and on alistapart too) and you didn't notice ;-)

I don't see what the problem with Todd providing a link to buy Studio MX 2004 is. Were he to provide the link without the profit, woud everyone be happy? So what if he makes a few bucks and it doesn't cost any of us anything. We've been profiting from him (ie his writing), while he's been paying for us. Does giving back a bit hurt?

And to the guy ranting about Zeldman talking about putting an ad on Zeldman.com, well it musn't bother you that much because the ads are already there (and on alistapart too) and you didn't notice ;-)

Look at http://weblog.bergersen.net