The Youtuber Rachael Elizabeth has a post promoting DNRS with an affiliate link to their website. An affiliate link lets the company pay commissions to Rachael Elizabeth for every sale that she generates. She (sort of) discloses her financial ties to the company in the video description for her Youtube videos. e.g.
Some of the links in the description may be affiliate links!
However, she didn’t do that in the post below:
When people don’t disclose, you may not realize that they are being paid when they promote the product.
How to spot an affiliate link
If you click on the link, it will take you to the following URL:
Notice the last part of the link- the ?wpam_id=104 part sends information to that website such as wpam_id, which may (or may not be) the tag for Wordpress Affiliate Manager. 104 is her specific id because most affiliate programs have multiple people advertising so the wpam_id would need to be tied to a specific person so that the right person gets the commission.
This method does not work all the time because there are ways to redirect the user to a URL that doesn’t have signs that it is an affiliate link. But, they didn’t do that in this situation so you can easily figure out that it’s not a normal link.
I really don’t like affiliate marketing for chronic illness because it’s a serious medical condition, some sufferers are barely hanging on financially, and patients deserve honest advice. Commissions and affiliate marketing cause people to bend the truth a little and that’s too much when there is so much at stake. It’s inappropriate.