Good stuff Matt, thanks!

Fixed. I just totally deleted Disqus based on this and reverted to the old comments system – better for backlinks too!

Sorry that it proved a pain to use.

Just for the record, I announced that I would be giving 25% of all Credit Card income to Charity off the top. That’s for my links only. That means if I am running in the red, the Charity still gets cash.

Now, I could also structure the site as a full not for profit and it might appear more generous than that, but in doing so I could also very validly slip in a salary and benefits for myself out of that profit, and in turn give a lot less than the 25% gross. Indeed, if I was running in the red for hosting and other costs zero dollars would reach the charity, and it would be a legitimate structure.

I took this route as I think too many people are making too much money off the links, too little is being done for society, and too many NFP organizations are hiding what they are really offering in Return on Invested Capital to their charities of choice.

The three Charities I currently support are:

Covenant House – helping at risk teens and young adults escape troubled homes and homelessness
The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund
Pack For A Purpose

Yes…after I told them!

Exsqueeze me? Have I made a blog post about it? I gave some hints and am having some fun with it. You don’t like it? You don’t need to play along you know:-) I appreciate you sharing your point of view. Actually I was expecting a lot more push back on this!

Was it obvious to your two friends?

I wonder if a charity could itself have a webpage with affiliate links but in a way disassociated from the organization’s main site. FTs who love to snark in the various be-mean-to-bloggers threads could spread the word, and some smaller bloggers (uh, bloggers with smaller audiences) might suggest readers use those links when they review certain cards. An issue would be ensuring that only the best offers were posted. Another would be a charitable organization having a financial interest in pushing certain financial products. I guess I could only imagine such a direct approach maybe working with a smaller, more DIY charity. Perhaps it just wouldn’t work at all, but it would be cool to sometimes direct what is plainly just easy money for some entity toward poor kids or something.

Yeah, Barry is cool and well respected. Let’s see how he does now that his name is on the door 🙂

You will never get 2% or 3%, it will always fluctuate around these figures, sometimes wildly. It takes guts to be buying and sticking through when everyone is jumping from windows. It will happen again, nobody knows when.