Over the last few weeks I have come to learn that Shareaholic is hijacking bloggers links without the bloggers knowledge, compromising bloggers tweets by allowing the linking of Shareaholic accounts, and several other topics that you can read about in my last 2 posts: Remove the Shareaholic Plugin Immediately! Threat! and Why You Should Remove the Shareaholic Plugin Immediately – Simplified
However, this post is to explain/show how Shareaholic is hijacking your links, earning revenue on Your Website/blog, and could be causing you to break agreements with your sponsors.
While Shareaholic was attempting to explain that they weren’t hijacking posts, they admitted to doing so in their statement:
Pay close attention to their example:
* Pre-existing link: http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Minds-Things-Business-Marketing/dp/1460230205/
* Affiliatized link: http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Minds-Things-Business-Marketing/dp/1460230205/?AFFILIATE_ID=12345 << That is a hijacked link.
Let me break it down for you. I have a sponsored post, a review of sorts. The sponsor wants me to use their Amazon link.
I am under agreement NOT to change the link in anyway. This example shows that Shareaholic does change the link, therefore breaking the agreement I made with the sponsor.
Upon Sponsor’s request I am not allowed to earn anything from those amazon links. Some of them are tracking links, others are just links the sponsor wants me to use, but it doesn’t matter – I Am Not Allowed To Change The Links In Anyway AND I Have Agreed Not To Earn Anything By Using Affiliate Links.**
Shareaholic has enabled a function on their Online Dashboard that will change those links so they can earn revenue from those links. To be nice, they tell us that they are going to give us some of that! They honestly think they will make it all better.
Shareaholic is:
1. Causing me to break the agreement with sponsor.
2. Deciding for me that Shareaholic is going to share revenue from MY site.
3. If you never realized that Shareaholic has monetized your site, if you’re not looking for the “Found Money” as they put it, they’re under no obligation to track you down to make sure you get your fair share.
Here is what Shareaholic is not taking away from the Outrage: If Shareaholic had Not hidden the options behind an online admin panel, if the options had been within the websites dashboard panel where everyone could see them and make the choice themselves, bloggers would be using those options right now.
But they didn’t do that! Shareaholic hid the options via an online dashboard, knowingly enabled affiliate sharing for the purpose of earning revenue.
If Shareaholic had put the options in the bloggers WordPress dashboard people would be signing up left and right, but they hid the options and if people like me don’t spread the word Shareaholic has NO REASON to contact the bloggers who’s sites they are monitizing and tell those bloggers about the money they have earned.
Shareaholic gets to keep all unclaimed revenue. That is what we call Class Action!
Here is a Question for Shareaholic:
How are you going to track down every last blogger to ensure that they are paid?
You have enabled this feature and I didn’t have a choice in the matter. Where Is MY Money?!?!
** Please note: Not only do I agree not to earn revenue using my sponsors posts, but all Mainers are Banned from earning revenue using Amazon’s affiliate program because of Maine’s tax laws.