Ethical Virus

Ethical podcasting

How ethical are your podcast promotion, profit, promises, and pride? This is a free-flowing episode where I share my genuine thoughts on these issues, after being an "innocent accomplice" to unethical Twitter-bombing.

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Ethics in Podcasting? – TAP208
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4 areas of podcasting ethics

Promotion

This is the big one. How ethically are you promoting your own podcast?

Twitter bombing is getting a lot of attention lately. This is when someone uses one or multiple Twitter accounts to blast the same message every few minutes to hundreds of times per hour. This artificially inflates podcast download stats because most of the "downloads" are from bots who humans who don't actually listen.

Check out these great articles and podcast episodes about Twitter bombing.

"TWITTER BOMBING WORKED! (to stroke my ego" by Bryan Orr)
"Twitter Bombing: What Is It – Is It Harmful – Does it Work" with Dave Jackson and Bryan Orr (host of Wow Small Business podcast)
Rob Walch and Elsie Escobar talked about Twitter-bombing in The Feed
Profit

Are you promoting things only because you'll profit from them? Do you disclose when you're using affiliate links?

Promises

When you make a promise, keep it!

This can be difficult when other people have unreasonable expectations on you or how you do things. You don't have to stress over these if you didn't promise them.

Pride

Don't make yourself out to be bigger than you actually are. Dave Jackson has some accurate thoughts on this.

Another article
Ethical podcasting?
One of our podcasting goals is to encourage others to create their own shows, especially medical learners.  So John Pienta, Irisa Mahaparn, Adam Erwood, and Erin Pazaski were pleased to hear from listener Terel, who got it and launched a podcast of her own!  Go, Terel!  Although perhaps she and her fellow pre-meds should (not) consider the path taken by another undergrad, who decided to skip all the pesky applying and test taking and just declare herself a medical student so she could jump right in and start seeing patients.  On the other hand, if you worked hard getting your MD, and made all the sacrifices medical education requires, then getting married to your degree may be something to think about.   As often happens to medical students, Irisa confesses she's having to learn what to think about herself when she doesn't get tippy-top grades in her classes...and she worries that if she had to help someone give birth on a train, surely no one aboard would survive.  And Dave offers his co-hosts some practice at answering health questions they might really hear someday, which he pulled from the saddest place on the internet:

Podcast ethics?

How much consideration do you put into choosing which affiliates links you use?

For most of my podcasts, affiliate links are easy—Amazon.com for everything because they sell everything at usually great prices.

But on my "how-to" podcast about podcasting, The Audacity to Podcast, affiliates are more complicated. I recommend many more products:

mixers,
microphones,
software,
audio cables,
video cameras,
mobile devices,
web hosting,
and anything else that helps podcasting.
In the past, I've used several affiliates:

Amazon.com,
Musician's Friend,
Monoprice, and
B&H Photo Video.
The decision for a link is hard when affiliate programs vary in payouts and certain companies will happily reshare my content if I use their affiliates exclusively. But when a single product is the same price on several sites, it's even harder to decide which affiliate to use.

I appreciate the affiliate relationship I have with B&H, but I know it's often more convenient and cheaper for my audience to purchase from Amazon.com.

A quick poll on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ revealed overwhelming preference for Amazon.com, even when other retailers had the same price. The reasons usually focused on the following.

Amazon Prime members who could get free two-day shipping
Amazon.com giftcards earned through programs like Swagbucks
Account already exists on Amazon and don't want to sign up somewhere else
Amazon.com's trusted reputation
I even prefer Amazon.com for most purchases because they usually have the best price, we have a warehouse nearby, and I regularly earn free giftcards from Swagbucks. Am I violating any rule by using an affiliate link to a retailer I may not prefer?

Then looking on the profit side, I usually make more money through my Amazon affiliates than I do with other affiliate links. Almost every month, I sell enough items through my combined Amazon tracking IDs that I earn a 6.5% commission (I'm always so close to 7%!). Each additional item sold through Amazon increases the possibility that I could earn a higher percentage rate.

Amazon offers handy widgets and plenty of linking options, including simply adding "tag=danieljlewis-20" to any URL to turn it into an affiliate link.

Then there's B&H. They have a great website, accurate search, great customer service, and handy link creation. While they offer a variety of widget formats, making widgets are a pain. My earning potential with B&H is a little lower. But they've reminded me that if I exclusively use B&H affiliate links in my product reviews, they would share my reviews with their social-media followers. And the better I perform, the more likely I can borrow some demo units for more reviews.

For most podcasting equipment I talk about on The Audacity to Podcast, I end up including affiliate links to both Amazon.com and B&H. This makes my linking process twice as long.

So what's the ethical thing to do? I believe that is to continue offering Amazon.com affiliate links first unless a better price or better product is available elsewhere. Sure, this won't make me popular with companies like B&H, but I believe this will give my followers the right options for them to make their own choices. After all, they're smart people.

How do you handle affiliate links for the same product from competing retailers? I'd love to hear your opinions and experience in the comments below.