Frankly, I stopped believing that Goodnight Johnbuy/Toolofthetrade is here for the trade.
Regarding deals posts, I don’t have any strategy there. I probably shouldn’t say that aloud, but it’s true. Sometimes a deal post is influenced by prior content, or planned content, but often loosely at best.
I figure that readers are like me – they plan out certain purchases, and others are impulse buys.
I took advantage of the Prime Day Wera deal, and ordered the precision screwdriver set, and the insulated screwdriver set. I wanted to order another bit and socket BitCheck, but the second time I checked, it was sold out, and the third time I checked, it was listed again, but no longer eligible for the 20% off promo discount.
Most deals are posted about because there’s a perceived interest. If I don’t post about a deal of the day that would otherwise pass the high-interest filter, readers emailing in about it will change my mind.
Also, as bad as it might sound from a business standpoint, I don’t pay much attention to retailer links or affiliate links, or anything of the sort. It’s a distraction. I’d rather focus on the tools, my opinions, and how to best share information and insights clearly.
From a technical standpoint, Amazon is easy to link to, and from a retailer standpoint, it’s fair to have them as a “standard.” If I’m talking about a certain product and am curious about current pricing and think it’d be interesting, I’ll add a $xyz via Amazon link. I coded a script in ToolGuyd’s back end, where I just need an ASIN and 5 seconds or less. There, an inline link.
For other affiliate retailers, I have to open a connection to my server, add a URL web address to the database, and shortcut text, and then add it as I would an Amazon link. It takes at least 10X longer. (The reason I created a database was because retailers change their structuring and break links. One retailer changed things again recently. If I didn’t do things the way I do it, I would have to have changed 1200 links across 10 years of content.)
I’m guessing 9 our of 10 people use Amazon as a pricing reference. And linking to other retailers takes 10X the time, when I’m interested in getting on with a post discussion.
If a particular retailer is more relevant, I’ll put in the time and effort to create the link.
Only a handful of people have complained or questioned the practice over the years – some of the being affiliated with other retailers. I’m open to alternative ways of doing things, but so far I haven’t received any suggestions or advice.
As it is, I get a lot of inquiries from people who want to buy tools from ToolGuyd directly. Sorry, we don’t ship anywhere, let alone out of the country, no we cannot set up NET30 credit line, sorry, there’s nothing I can do about pricing or availability information from a post published 6 years ago.
So, links are added in a manner I consider sufficient to be helpful, but also in moderation so as to not be distracting to myself or readers.
There are times when I’d rather not post about something – maybe a deal of the day that I don’t find particularly appealing – but such deals are often heavily promoted by the retailer or media sites that have become too pushy with affiliate links, and I feel compelled to make my opinion known.
A lot of these things have become instinctually automatic. When I’m writer, fact checker, image and photo editor, and editor, things like when to link, and to where, it becomes an automatic process. If a link seems appropriate, in it goes. If not, I keep writing. Most of the time, “appropriate” means a link goes where I’d benefit from a link. If I look up a price, others might want to look at the price. If I mention a competing or antecedent product, someone unfamiliar might want a link to a prior post or current listing.
Nearly 10 years of ToolGuyd, and some experience before that, has instilled me with a subconscious flowchart.
I always try my best to provide a transparent explanation, but the answer isn’t always at the surface.
