Skimlinks trial on MSE forums

thelawnet

oakhouse13 wrote: »

Dan, you may have already considered this but as an alternative to Skimlinks as a way to cover the costs of the forum, have you thought of asking for tips?

Perhaps you could announce a trial. Invite tips by PayPal. I know this sounds tacky. You could do it on the basis that you would not accept those funds but are doing it as a trial to see if it would raise a significant amount. If it did, and I think it would because in my view millions of people would contribute a small amount for the forum to keep it independent, you could them formalise it.

I think all this talk of donations is rather disingenuous.

MSE takes in millions per year in revenue already, from all those bank account and insurance articles, among other things.

Martin's face is all over the site, and the 'MoneySavingExpert' brand is cross-promoted between the website and TV - every time he appears on TV (presumably getting a fee) he is getting free publicity for his website, which gets a considerable income.

The weekly email, which goes out linking to articles with hundreds of MSE affiliate links in it is fed by the forum generating content.

Moneysavingexpert is by no means hard up.

Now there's nothing wrong with saying 'Martin wants to make more money', but let's at least be straightforward about this and not make out that this site is costing him money - far from it, it's a brand worth tens of millions of pounds and it's quite understandable him trying to leverage that. I do however think it's time to drop the idea that MSE is a loss-making venture in need of your pity or charity.

JimmyTheWig

What's with the link (word Breakdown) in the first post in this thread?
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2643435

Is this anything to do with skimlinks?

Edinburghlass_2

a copy and paste from CAG by the looks of it

MSE_Martin

Just a quick thank you from me for all the feedback on this.

MSE Dan, who is web editor of the MSE site, is managing the skim links project as I think its important you have someone who's on top of all the issues and can monitor it - rather than me dipping in with the occassional response due to other time pressures.

We are of course reading all your posts and suggestions and monitoring the impact and thinking if we do continue with it about hte best way to communicate it with maximum transparency.

That's why we are trialling it rather than just launching it per se. Without trialling it though we simply couldn't know how it works.

Thanks

Martin

Mobeer

Dan, when I create a link manually adding a link (with option "Automatically parse links in text" unticked), the Preview box shows this text, and a link:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/
in the status bar is given as "http://www.amazon.co.uk/"

It reads the same in the status bar after making this post (submitting after preview).

How does this lacks the redirection as seen previously for amazon.co.uk?

Errata

May I suggest you think very hard about how you communicate information to members and non members about this thingummygig ? At the moment I haven't a clue what it's all about and suspect I may not be the only one.

We're not all geeks/nerds/techheads. I'm certainly not, every though I was coding long before anyone in MSE Towers was even born.

bonzer

Generally it seems fair enough I think. I often come back to the site anyway to deliberately click your affiliate links to give you the money as I know it pays for the free service.

A post further back though has nailed a slight flaw in this. If someone is trying to get cashback on quidco etc and comes back to the site to navigate to an offer, it's quite possible they'll lose the cashback and will be really annoyed. I think you need to make it obvious what's happening in every post you skimlink e.g put an asterisk on the link etc or something like that and a note at the bottom of the forum. This would be consistent with what's done elsewhere on the site.

fermi

Edinburghlass wrote: »

a copy and paste from CAG by the looks of it

Yep.

They have a system that inserts links when people write certain keywords. Rather annoying. I'm glad MSE aren't doing that.

thepearce

thelawnet wrote: »

I think all this talk of donations is rather disingenuous.

MSE takes in millions per year in revenue already, from all those bank account and insurance articles, among other things.

Martin's face is all over the site, and the 'MoneySavingExpert' brand is cross-promoted between the website and TV - every time he appears on TV (presumably getting a fee) he is getting free publicity for his website, which gets a considerable income.

The weekly email, which goes out linking to articles with hundreds of MSE affiliate links in it is fed by the forum generating content.

Moneysavingexpert is by no means hard up.

Now there's nothing wrong with saying 'Martin wants to make more money', but let's at least be straightforward about this and not make out that this site is costing him money - far from it, it's a brand worth tens of millions of pounds and it's quite understandable him trying to leverage that. I do however think it's time to drop the idea that MSE is a loss-making venture in need of your pity or charity.

Well put. I was hoping someone was going to mention this after I read

This forum is massive, one of the UK’s biggest social networking sites. It has no adverts (no one can pay to be on the site) and does not generate any income.

Not directly, no..... but as well as MSE research, many of the things that end up in the weekly tip, the main site, and Martin's TV tips, come from the forum - the vast army of unpaid researchers....and of course now we have popularity features so the decent offers are easier to spot.

Don't get me wrong this is a two way street - if the forum were not there we would not be able to share and *receive* tips and advice...and I'm grateful it exists... but labelling the forum a cost, while technically true, neglects the value of it as an asset.

little_monkey

Found this when i was looking for stuff on skimlinks thingy


http://www.insiders-view.co.uk/moneysavingexpert-increases-userbase-and-earnings-potential/001026