Skimlinks trial on MSE forums

meher

robt wrote: »

I don't think you understand what the problem is or how cashback sites work sorry.

I realise that thanks, which is why mine is only an opinion and not presented as facts :A unlike others have without presenting any evidence.

thelawnet wrote: »

It's not the intention to 'defeat' people's cashback at all, so yes mse should 'lose out' - people that want their cashback should get it.

I don't dispute that, lawnet, just that could people post some evidence here so that it could be validated. And sure, this site is about helping people maximise saving and not deprive us of any cashback but I think mse is only obliged to consider alternatives, they don't have to put an end to skimtrial if the site benefits, only imo ofcourse, with my limited understanding. Just that people should get a perspective about what business being competitive means - it affects cashback sites and it would eventually affect skimlinks but no one has to compromise - they should focus on alternatives instead. So it would suffice mse discloses and informs and it's up to the users to find a way round it.

thelawnet wrote: »

Rob? All the outbound links currently provide zero income. There is nothing to rob.

Durng the trial period probably not, after that my guess is they would take a commission - it would be sort of a joint venture.

thelawnet wrote: »

Because the site is (purportedly) about saving money. If people are trying to save money and the site is actively conflicting with that, then clearly there is a problem.

Thanks, this ^ makes immense sense, yes, it would seem there's a conflict of interest there but financing a site is usual and customary; the only change as far as I make out here is that they have made the affiliate system more efficient. If the cashback is declined and instead it goes into the site, then we users have a problem, but then again it is only a hypothetical situation and one to be anticipated; such is the nature of business models, cookie controlling or whatever. Everyone is out to outwit one another, sorry but that's just me considering it dispassionately. It's so damn easy to have an opinion when you're not affected. The team will hopefully work out something favorably for the users or even give skimlinks a royal ditch - may be they should pose this as a weekly money dilemma

thelawnet

meher wrote: »

Durng the trial period probably not, after that my guess is they would take a commission - it would be sort of a joint venture.

Skimlinks take 25% of the commission payable by the retailer/website to the publisher (i.e. MSE)

Presumably if this continued, MSE would look at their earnings reports, and see which were most earning most, and set up/use their own affiliate accounts for those sites, thereby retaining 100%.

meher

imagine what would happen if the shops were to bring in a software which automatically asks us to clear all our tracking cookies; no one could make any claims I suppose - I find pure thrill in all these techi tricks and dramatics

don't want to go offtopic anymore than I might'v so leaving it here, thanks lawnet you were patient and your responses informative

JimmyTheWig

Horlock wrote: »

I'm definately not happy by this.

The reasons can be read in the following threads
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2647255
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/35513107#Comment_35513107

Basically I've just wrongly accused a fellow money saver of disguising affiliate links - when in fact it is MSE who is disguising the links.

I hope that this case is being looked in to. The idea has been presented to us that we wouldn't notice the difference. Horlock _did_ notice a difference.
This is the one real-world report that we have on this discussion of a problem. I hope that the MSE team will be contacting Horlock to find out what made them notice the affiliate.

[It also brings up a secondary question about how to tell users about the change. Most of us on this thread read the thread before clicking an affiliated link. Horlock didn't.]

Former_MSE_Dan

Horlock wrote: »

Dear MSE

I'm definately not happy by this.

The reasons can be read in the following threads
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2647255
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/35513107#Comment_35513107

Basically I've just wrongly accused a fellow money saver of disguising affiliate links - when in fact it is MSE who is disguising the links.

To me this is DISGRACEFUL.

If MSE were open and honest about them as they used to be about affiliate links then I would be happy. The truth is the link is being disguised!

A simple work around would be everywhere a person puts a link replace the link by two links, the first the affiliate the second the original link - but make the first link clear (eg with the site's original method of astericks).

That way people can happily chose the MSE link (I always have in the past) or the other (if they prefer).

If skimlinks must be used exactly as is - simply run a script after skimlinks which replaces skimlinks links with a choice.

VERY POOR FORM

DON'T TRY AND CON MONEY OUT OF MONEYSAVERS - IT IS CONTRARY TO THE ORIGINAL IDEAS OF THIS WEBSITE

Hi Horlock,

Thanks for this feedback.

This is currently a trial, and we communicated this with a bright pink box and link in the right hand side of the forum, not just this board.

If we go ahead after the trial, we will be considering many issues, including how to ensure we've done what we can to let site users know about it.

I've read through those threads, and the misunderstanding is unfortunate. However, you and the other poster seem to have sorted this out by talking it through, and realising where the confusion happened, which is one of the great strenghs of the forum. I'm sorry it happened in the first place; though we have done our best to let people know about this trial.

Dan

Minerva69

MSE_Dan wrote: »

This is currently a trial, and we communicated this with a bright pink box and link in the right hand side of the forum, not just this board.

Sorry I hadn't realised you'd done this - I rarely look at the sidebar so hadn't seen it. It's not overly big though, I have to scroll down to see it and it isn't bright pink on my monitor. Perhaps it would have been better to put it at the top?

furndire

Please excuse me for just copying from rant I had on one of the comp pages - so will try again here.

I have always tried to enter the comps from the site directly (usually by c & p) from IE to another page open in FF - just something I have done, and its worked pretty well. But now you c &p, the link is coming up as https://www.moneysavingexpert etc etc. For example, even clicking on http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/to...=uk&l=en&s=dfo
as in weeowens link I get


http /www. moneysavingexpert. com/redir/5d857493?id=3196X602032&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww1.euro .dell.com%2Fcontent%2Ftopics%2Ftopic.aspx%2Femea%2 Fsegments%2Fdfo%2Fsurvey%2Fuk%2Ffy11q3_inspcompuk% 3Fc%3Duk%26l%3Den%26s%3Ddfo

I have even had to put spaces in the above, as it still didn't wouldn't let me copy without them.
I'm not very good at explaining things in writing unfortunately - but give it a try (if you are interested), and hopefully you'll see what I mean

I have been picking out the site from the links, but can't do it on some of them.
If you right click on a lot of the links on MSE, the link actually changes to the referral link.
I don't mind clicking on links for MSE to make some money out of them, but I think (in my mind) we will maybe get disqualified from a lot of them. Not legal, but hey, who can prove its been done.
Its another reason why I use a different user name to every other site but this one (and 1 other). Paranoid maybe???? I know this conversation should really be in discussions, but no-one else seemed to pick up on what was happening - too busy comping.

comping_cat

I agree with furndire - i am happy for MSE to make money from my clicks, however i am very concerned for the competition board. I know some firms do trace where all the extra traffic is coming from, they post on the comp thread proving it, but its the firms that dont come onto the forum that could just disqualify entries - some T&Cs are confusing regarding this, that im worried about. Yes, copy and pasting would help, but it is time consuming and the way some people post their links, makes it very difficult to access the address.

Ok, im sure some will say take the time to do the C&P, but not everyone has the time to do this and the whole point of the comp board is to post competions and often the answers to save people the time and effort of searching themselves. Having to then C&P links to hide the fact they are coming from MSE (and as someone said, often the firms do know where you have come from, but surely its better not to bring so much attention to it) almost defeats the object of using MSE. People use MSE not just for the answers and links, but also the people who are on here, you just have to read some of the discussions and posts to see how friendships have been made, and people have been helped.

Former_MSE_Dan

Hi fundire,

Big thanks for this - it's exactly the kind of testing and glitch-finding we need (though we'd rather be glitch-free ).

Don't know what the problem/solution is yet, but the tech team here are now looking into this

Cheers

Amilucky?

The referral link has always been sent by MSE so comp organisers have always been able to see that you have come from MSE

the Skimlinks software doesn't change anything in this respect accept that it changes the link to an affilliate one and then re-directs

comp organisers however might not appreciate the fact that you have come from an affiliated link direct to there competition page from MSE

to be quiet honest a lot of comp organisers don't like competition sites as they tend to link direct to there competitions page and miss out on the rest of there site they may dislike MSE compers even more now when the referral link is an affiliated one

the only way to avoid not sending the referral link is by dragging the link into your tab bar or address bar this also stops the link from being re-directed by the Skimlinks software which may be quite good for us compers but it means that MSE lose out on revenue because the link hasn't been re-directed

I have been using the drag n drop method for about 18 months now and it works quite well but my bugbear now is that I am not contributing to mse by clicking on the links