Do you allow members to post affiliate links?

I'm debating as to whether I should allow this or not. If you don't allow it, how do you prevent it?

 

I allow it, especially if its a referral link to another game in our niche. They can place these links in reviews and guides that they write or a thread that made about the game. Our users love having the ability to post afffliate/referral links around the site, also in signatures.

As long as a member is active, I don't see why you shouldn't allow this.

 

I'm planning on having a hosting section in the forum and my fear would be that people would be give biased info about a host in order to gain a referral. I see your point about active members posting links though.

I was thinking about allowing it, but asking people to include a disclaimer indicating they will make money from it. Is that something that you've seen anyone else do?

I plan on disallowing links until users have ten posts. Too bad I can't set a separate limit for affiliate links to up the requirement (to make sure that they are active).

 

I don't actively do anything to stop it. But, I do use VigLink and have the re-write feature on so it will overwrite many of their affiliate links.

 

Same here.

 

I don't allow users to post links until 10 posts, nor post blog posts. So, I like this idea and think you should go ahead and do it. A disclaimer isn't really needed, just add it to your rules page. I haven't seen anyone do this before, but you could be unique and do it anyways.

 

For the most part, I don't mind too much if they post affiliate links. If I were to own a webmaster or promotion forum, though, I wouldn't allow it because I know people would simply join in order to try to post those links. That would drive me insane. As it stands, I rarely even see affiliate links on my own forums.

 

We only allow them to post their affiliate links in signatures, but they're not allowed to do so in their posts. I plan on coding a script where I can automatically update some urls/keywords with my affiliate urls, so if I allowed my members to post affiliate links in posts it'd take away from possible revenue.

 

This is what I did for my last forum (I didn't allow members to post e-mails until they reached 10 posts either). It proved to be the best way to prevent spam.

I don't mind links as long as they below to popular sites (if someone was linking to their Facebook profile or a YouTube video, I had no problem with that) or affiliate sites, but I links to sites in the same niche are a big no-no. I don't need people to be telling others about the competition!

 

In the right section

 

I would allow it as long as it was rare for them to be posting affiliate links, they would also have to follow the rules and participate in the community or else I would probably like it less.

 

If I can't make money off of it nor do I trust the link, I don't allow it.