A Blog Hijacking

Every love affair has some bumps and I experienced one in my relationship with Amazon today. Thanks to Rick's sharp eye, I discovered that my blog was linked throughout with popup windows and links to various Amazon books, some of which were books I'd never recommend. The one Rick saw was to a diet book from an disreputable author, and my last two posts have been non-diet posts--advocating an approach to eating that doesn't involve any external authority telling you what to eat. This was very disconcerting to me.

I felt like my blog had been hijacked by an Amazon bot or troll. Amazon apparently combs your blog content and then links to books they select. To my dismay, my content was rife with link after link to books I'd never heard of. Selected by a robot.

So I terminated my Amazon Associates agreement, a process that took hours (but that's another story) which means that you'll never see commercial messages from Amazon again on my blog. I still love Amazon, and will still link to books or other items I recommend, but every link you see will be from me and not Amazon (which was the way I thought it was, anyway). And of course, I'll get no referral fee, but I don't care. It's not worth losing the integrity of my blog over this.

Be careful, folks. Read the fine print of your agreements! Don't learn the hard way like me...you know those things that say "I Accept" and then you never read them? Read them!

I also got rid of my BlogRush link as well, since that wasn't commercial, but was bringing in BlogRush content to boost my blog traffic. I want my blog to stay clean and personal. Even if it's small. I'd choose that over robot-selected links any day. The only link I kept was to Energy Muse jewelry, because it's a small company whose products I've loved for years and believe in one hundred percent...I want you to have that link. And the ad is so peaceful; I love to watch it change! :)

Anyway, I'm not sure how long this has been going on, but I apologize for it. And a big thanks again to Rick!



GWCC-UPDATE: Surprise! It's a new day one for me :) The longest I've ever gone was 22:45. I'm not giving up...