Skimlinks trial on MSE forums

JimmyTheWig

Totality wrote: »

I appreciate many won't care about the changes. I just think it's a bit off that MSE are effectively getting free labour out of this and I think the whole way its being done (and the wording of statements being put on here by MSE staff) is bad.

Just my opinion though.

Ok, I think MSE get this point by now. Can we move on...

... to the likes of this...

Personally speaking, I've already seen a downside because I've had problems browsing a website as a result of this new linking system.

MSE, has this issue been investigated? Has it been fixed? If not, will it be?

To me this is much more of an issue than any hypothetical problem that doesn't actually affect people.

robt_2

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

What expense? What have they lost?

I'm normally on the ball with this kind of thing, but I just don't see what the problem is here.
I understand that the change is being trialled in order to make money. I understand that some people aren't happy with the notification given about the trial. But I don't understand any real problems with it.

Read the thread then - here are some reasons from the first few pages.

1) People missing out on cashback - it going to MSE instead
2) Putting links in control of a 3rd party can be dangerous to your PC. If you use DigitalSpy you may know that they have infected their users with viruses on more than one occasion in the last 12 months because their advertising links are in control of a 3rd party
3) Getting stuck in redirect loops

JimmyTheWig

robt wrote: »

Read the thread then - here are some reasons from the first few pages.

1) People missing out on cashback - it going to MSE instead
2) Putting links in control of a 3rd party can be dangerous to your PC
3) Getting stuck in redirect loops

Then why are we not going round in circles (or, even better, making progress) talking about these issues? Why are we talking about theoretical issues?

robt_2

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

Then why are we not going round in circles (or, even better, making progress) talking about these issues? Why are we talking about theoretical issues?

Because some people keep skipping the majority of the thread and jumping in telling people they don't understand what all the fuss is about BTW, I was editing my post whilst you quoted it.

PhiltheBear

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

I've often wondered whether this is the case. I've often looked to see if there was any evidence of it happening.
But have never found any.

Can you give examples of things that should have been in the weekly email but haven't due to lack of affiliate links?
Can you give examples of things that shouldn't have been in the weekly email but have only made it due to their affiliate links? (Other than the one example already given of Weebuy.)

No I can't - but I was quoting Martin Lewis. He said that they do more publicity for articles with more paid links in. (The Times Magazine, 07/08/10, page 31) He also says "We can drive traffic to a subject and we will do that more when the subject has paid links".

I think that's a bit naughty - but I can see why he does it. He says it's the only ethical compromise on the site. I'm starting to suspect a trolley load of !!!!!!!!.

MSE_Martin

There are many misunderstandings above

Some of the comments I find genuinely offensive, and think completely misread or misrepresent what we're trying to do.

Though I'd like to thank the users who've made practical suggestions, spotted glitches, or tried to contibute positively.

I am about to go off on annual leave, but before I do I wanted to write a brief note on this so far.

Why are we considering this

The aim of this change is of course to generate money, but that money is primarily demarked to ADD new services to the forums.

Someone about wrote that we should only be spending £100s on running this forum. That made my laugh aloud. If anyone knows how a forum of this size (the 8th biggest social networking site in the UK) with 5 million users a month can be hosted for £100s without any staff - please do tell me how?

Remember the bandwidth and processing power used to maintain these forums is enormous. We have an industrial strength set up with very limited down time allowing thousands of people to interact at the same time.

Our users demand a high level of service from us.

• If we have one second of slowness hundreds of people complain how awful the whole thing is
• When there's abuse issues, spam, trolling people come in outraged "why havent you done anything a post has been up for twenty minutes"
• We have scores of legal letters sent to us over things posted in the forum and we have a senior lawyer to try and maintain them on the site where we judge its in consumer interest and not let people bully us into silence.
  
  Without the lawyer, frankly every complain made about companies on here would simply need deleting - not much of a consumer forum.

I believe that through tway its run and the outstanding contibutions of its users its an incredible resource for millions. Yet that takes substantial funds to achieve.

No one has said the costs of running the forum have increased (though as it grows increase incrementally - but that isn't the focus) my hoped outcome of this exercise is to see if we can find a way to make money which had no MoneySaving impact on users or content that we could then spend primarily on improving the service given in here

To clarify in this means in ADDITION to the current set up not to pay for the current set up - we also hope to generate some cash for the sites charities too. If we don't do this, I'm not saying those changes can't be made, though they certainly won't happen as quickly - yet if the forum can contribute with no impact on its users - I am struggling to see the problem.

The amount skimlinks will generate will likely be very substantially less than half the forum's current cost, yet its likely a marginal increase of this type in the forum's budget would have a big impact.

Why is it opt out?

I have read many of the posts and the representations made - I have quite a lot of sympathy with the representaions about an opt-in point of view and it will be on the discussion agenda when teh trial finishes.

Yet we have the trial running now so we added an opt out for those who are unhappy.

When the trial ends, skimlinks in its current form wil lbe taken off the site. We will evaluate it from all points of view, including the feedback here looking at four key points.

1. Will we introduce skimlinks permanently?
2. If we do introduce it, in what form and to who?
3. If we do introduce it, how is it appropriately communicated?

We're not perfect

To those berating us who think we've done something wrong - let me make an admittence to you now.

We're not perfect, we're not omnicompetent, we haven't done this perfectly. I'm sorry I wish we were. Though frankly much of it is only spottable with the benefit of hindsight.

We hadn't seen skimlinks as being that big a deal - as every question we'd asked was about the impact on users and whether it would change any of the information given on the site.

Of course we've learned much and seen a few areas of problems and have changed them. Some of the negative comments were correct, but many are both factually incorrect and ill conceived.

The suggestion we should've done this as a small technical trial is a good one - yet we didn't we thought it would be any easier implementation this way. So where we are now is we're carrying on the trial until 6 September to see what we can learn.

Will we carry on.

The decision we take will balance the benefit of its introduction to the forum and the increased resources it'd generate against the impact on users.

The primarly rule is it should never cost users anything - and it should never impact their moneysaving.

There are some rather strange posts above commenting that it will "take £100s out of people's pockets" yet no one has ever actually pointed out when or how that would happen.

The main meat of what's been raised about cashback, competitions, GIOL have all been dealt with (though we're doing final checks with cashback users). And we would love to hear of more so we can try and solve them or if we can't that would add to the weight of not continuing.

And please finally, I have noted most of the complaints above are from the same small negative vocal group who try and attack me and the site in all it does. I don't know why that is - and you are entitled to your opinion (though I never understand why you spend so much time here if you feel that way) yet please the points been made, can we leave this to practical points from now on.

Thank you

Martin

thelawnet

MSE_Archna wrote: »

I find this suggestion quite offensive being on the editorial team. I checked out Weeebuy, decided it was worth telling users about first and foremost. It was only after the decision was made that the commercial person looked into whether it was possible to get a link.

As we explain (briefly in the email and in more detail in the article) it has decent prices for many things but not all. We also explain that selling on eBay can get you more as can local pawnbrokers like Cex I'm not sure what is money wasting about recycling an old gadget that is gathering dust in a drawer.

You don't? The thing is the gadget could gather dust in a drawer for years and still be worth more than Weeebuy will pay you today.

The name is I think a hint - WEEE, the WASTE electrical and electronic equipment, and old laptops etc are *not* waste, they are saleable and valuable.

The email mentions fridges, which are in many cases indeed 'Waste', but the site only actually buys:

Mobiles
Cameras
MP3 players
Games Consoles
Laptops
Satnavs

none of which are remotely waste - I don't see them buying old CRT TVs or other junk of this nature, they only want valuable stuff.

I had a look at cameras:

Fuji A180 - Weeebuy offers £7. CeX £22 or £30 as p/x.
Nikon D90 - Weeebuy offers £32. Cex offers £297 or £371 as p/x

MP3 players:
Ipod 10GB 1st gen - Weeebuy offers £1 (!). CeX offers £12 or £16 as p/x.

Games consoles:
Xbox 360 Elite 120GB, Weeebuy offers £44. CeX offers £62 or £83 p/x.

Mobiles:
HTC Touch Dual Weeebuy offers £26. CeX offers £29, £40 or £44 (dependent on simlock) or £38, £53 or £58 (p/x).

Laptops:
here they only have competition from ebay, but you could be giving your laptop away for 5% of its ebay value by selling to Weeebuy, the prices are terrible.

Satnavs:
(not working on Weeebuy currently)

Plainly IMO Weeebuy is a dog. Now it's fine that you mention that they are new site buying [STRIKE]valuable electronic equipment[/STRIKE] junk, and suggest that it's good - people might just think you haven't properly evaluated the other options, but there's no reason to suppose that the piece is motivated by concerns other than money-saving. But when you promote the site with a custom commercial relationship, it goes from 'hmm, they haven't done their research' to a suspicion of impropriety.

It's great for people to sell their old gadgets, but the way to do that is not by emailing out x million people a link to Weee[STRIKE]PayLess[/STRIKE]buy where they will get substantially less money than other mail-order options, such as CeX (which is not just a local pawnbroker, but also a mail-order retailer/buyer), but people should be checking ebay 'completed' prices FIRST, and then comparing those with web-buyers such as CeX and Weeebuy.

You don't want to be selling your £500 Nikon D90 (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170525205146) to Weeebuy for £32, that would be a money-saving tragedy.

When you choose to build a commercial relationship (the nature of which is undisclosed) with a site you're linking to, it's inevitable that people will wonder what your motivations are in doing so.

JimmyTheWig

robt wrote: »

Because some people keep skipping the majority of the thread and jumping in telling people they don't understand what all the fuss is about BTW, I was editing my post whilst you quoted it.

If you mean me jumping in, I was trying to get it back on track - back to the real problems.
And yes, I spotted your edit, but figured it made enough sense as a quote without it.

PhiltheBear wrote: »

No I can't - but I was quoting Martin Lewis. He said that they do more publicity for articles with more paid links in. (The Times Magazine, 07/08/10, page 31) He also says "We can drive traffic to a subject and we will do that more when the subject has paid links".

Ooh, that really is not on. I'm quite cross about that.

robt wrote: »

If this link is correct...

Whether it is correct or not I would question the motives of the site that published it looking at their "sponsors and friends".

Wee_Bargain_Hunter

Well to get back on topic, I've just disabled skinlinks as I was having trouble seeing links - all I was getting was one of those blank 1x1 gif image pages whether I clicked normally or right clicked. I wasn't sure if links were genuine or or not.
Since I've disabled skimlinks, the issue has been resolved & I can now see the items that people have been linking to. It was very frustrating not being able to see the links & not being sure if it was a dodgy referral or not.
It even happened with a link I posted myself the other day so I KNEW it was ok but it still would not work for me: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=35824505&postcount=2.
If it helps, it happened using firefox. When I switched to explorer, the pages were blank but had the full mse referral link visible in the blue bar at the top.

thelawnet

MSE_Archna wrote: »

It's also worth noting we're not the only site who uses the forums' content – you'll often see it popping up daily in national newspapers, on other websites and more –
both sourced and unsourced. This is an open forum, anyone can read it – and many do. We have no monopoly on using it for information nor any special privilege. The difference is MoneySavingExpert is the one who has to pay the bills for it.

That comes across as rather disingenuous TBH. It's pretty much Web 101 to build a forum on a site, as they drive traffic to the main site. Forum builders don't expect it to be a profit centre, they do it to build their brand.

People linking from other sites to the user-generated content here are publicising the MSE brand name, performing free SEO (MSE *pays* for adverts on Google, so this has a non-negligible value), boosting the site's viewer numbers, increasing its credibility/profile, brand value and boosting Martin's media saleability.

Originally the site said:

"[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]For the sake of transparency it should be noted that Martin neither earns commission nor fees from any recommendations and is completely independent from all product and information providers. Martin makes his living as a journalist simply by being paid for writing articles or broadcasting. This website is funded personally by Martin Lewis and does not raise revenue. Over time it is hoped that this website will be continuously improved and developed. The more people who sign up and visit the site, the more facilities it will be possible to offer.[/FONT]"

Adding "However that isn’t to say there isn’t some benefit from running this site, it’s important for me as a base to build my brand and potentially as a distribution list for a future book."

Without the forum, there is no question whatsoever that neither Martin Lewis nor MSE would be as big a brand as they are now.

So let's not delude ourselves that the forum is anything other than for the benefit of MSE, or that it 'paying the bills for it' is odd in any way. Clearly Martin's priorities have changed over time, that's entirely his choice, but let's just be straight about it.