The problem for me is that visitors to my site may think that I'm the one who is using this affiliate code, and that I'm looking to make a buck off my links.
Is that a problem? Depends; some readers are put off by this sort of thing. Witness the comments on HN when someone discovers an affiliate link in a article posted here.
You can dismiss this as a fairly benign way to increase revenue, but I'd prefer no one alter my content, benign or not, without telling me right up front.
Well, apparently these are fairly hard to discover if they can do it sitewide for millions of people and not have it seen for four months. This suggests an obvious opportunity for folks who want to promote their affiliate links on HN: clean links in HTML, dynamically retarget to affiliate link via Javascript. Nobody will see it. (Particularly for merchants who 301 their affiliate links to the standard pages -- you'd have to be watching your HTTP headers very carefully to see that.)
Seriously, the possibilities for abuse of this are endless. Which is why the Powers That Be are going to come down on it like a ton of bricks.
I'm amused at the thought of the common practice of linking to Amazon and explicitly disclaiming in the text that you aren't getting kickbacks you just really like the book and then the readership finding some semi-obscured javascript that adds affiliate links.
What's wrong with a business having a revenue model?
It does not follow that because someone thinks a business has chosen a bad revenue model, that person thinks that any business having a revenue model is bad. Please don't write dross such as this.
