After receiving a complaint about my affiliate links, I thought I would do a quick post and talk about bloggers who hard sells their affiliate links.

I got an email from someone recently stating that I have too many affiliate links and I’m trying to push them on the readers.

This isn’t the case at all. I’m a self-confessed shopaholic who could very easily give Rebecca Bloomwood a run for her money. I simple see my ‘shopping pages’ as someone who is giving friendly advice to people.

My approach to affiliate marketing is me discussing or showing the latest things in shops. I visualize a coffee shop and just us talking about items that we want to buy.

I like to think my approach is very different to how other bloggers approach their affiliates. I tend to take the back-seat approach and show you guys what is on offer – and you can make up your own mind if you like it or not.

There are bloggers out there who don’t take the back-seat approach and will basically hard sell their affiliate links. I’m not saying this bad. This is just something I have noticed.

There are bloggers who basically guilt trips you into buying their products or clicking on a link. Very often you come across a sob story where if someone don’t buy a product then they would be out of a job, won’t be able to feed the cat and will be living in the car.

Or some will keep repeating and repeating an affiliate link with lots of buzz words that you feel almost obliged to click on it and spend your hard earned cash.

I signed up to newsletter and within a space of a day, I received 6 different emails – all with the same affiliate links. I soon unsubscribed.

I once walked out of a job, latterly walked out. Didn’t finish till the end of the day or hand in my notice, I just got my coat and walked out. I walked out based on principal. The workplace at the time was trying to forced people to sign up to their store card. The store cards I could see instantly were a con and this didn’t sit well with me at all. So I would feel so bad asking customers and people who trust me, about the store card. To make matter worst, we had target to meet and we had to do so many every single day and the end it would tallied who did the most. Well guess, who failed at that? I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. So that why I walked.

This bring me back to affiliate links, it not my place to tell people to sign up to this – or to that. Or even forced people to spend their own hard earned cash on something.

I think if you try to hard sell something too much, a little bit of trust gets lost. I don’t want that to happen. This is why I take the back-seat approach and let you decide for yourself whether you want to click on it or not.

Like I said at the beginning, I’m a shopaholic and I will always find something online I like. And when I do – I will them share it with you all.

Overall I don’t hard sell my affiliate links, I hope my readers will see it as a friend and just someone who is giving friendly honest advice. Visualize a coffee shop and friends chatting over chai latte.

To bloggers who hard sells their affiliate links, perhaps you might want to turn it down a notch and not do so much hard selling. As it very well might not have the effect you wanted. But then again it is up to you.

What do you guys think about this? I would like to hear your thoughts on this.