Yesterday I received an e-mail asking me to apply for Patagonia’s affiliate program, which would offer a 7 percent commission for every item sold from a link on my blog. I can’t imagine I’ve got enough readers to make it worth the trouble but even if I did, a commission set-up strikes me as problematic.

With advertising/sponsorship, you hope your credibility in some way encourages folks to buy what somebody else is selling, but you have no vested interest in closing the sale. Commissions, however, are inherently contradictory: self-interest obliges you to maximize sales, which undermines your credibility, drives down readership and decreases your odds of closing a sale (which is why so many retail outlets have gotten away from commissions for sales people). Affiliate programs allow large retailers to gather many crumbs into a whole loaf of bread, but I’m not sure what they do for the people on the crumb end of the sales chain. Might cover your ISP bill, I suppose.

A guy called ProBlogger has a list of tips for affiliate programs, all of which suggest to me they might make sense for somebody running a product-intensive site which attracts a lot of people seeking buying advice. You’d have to adopt a no-fear-or-favor attitude and have unbreakable integrity about telling it like it is, and you’d have to be open about the commission relationship, and you’d have to make sure your commission links are placed somewhere in the review to help people find the product online, and you’d have to be comfortable with directing people to your affiliate partner when you know good and well a better deal might be available somewhere else.

Who needs all those complications?

Blogging on a subject near to your heart takes time way from doing something you enjoy. Chasing nickels to drive a bit of revenue to your blog means more blogging time and less get-out-and-have-fun time. I’d rather be out there walking upright on dirt.