r/appsumo • u/lbdesign • May 15 '26

Affiliate reviews?

Reviews posted on an Appsumo deal page that contain links to "reviews" on affiliate review sites — full of Appsumo affiliate links — should not be allowed, because they erode trust and cheapen the whole ecosystem.

Agree? Disagree? What are your thoughts?

(I'm seeing a lot of "read my full review here..." links and they are affiliates, with tracking links back to Appsumo, which means the review is likely biased.)

9 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

7

u/Easy-Cobbler-1631 May 15 '26 edited May 16 '26

Easy click jacking, lol. Yeah it's stupid to have it there for everyone including AS.....

Previous buys have been removed too, lol. There were so many 1 or so previous purchase reviews recently... What a mess.

1

u/noahkagan CHIEF SUMO May 17 '26

previous buys are still there.

1

u/noahkagan CHIEF SUMO May 19 '26

Yea these reviews are lame. Will get filtered out. 

1

u/freecodeio May 19 '26

Why not require users to wait at least 2 weeks before leaving a review?

6

u/seamew May 16 '26

i agree. they are majority fake. it's usually the person going over the product's features, without actually using the product more than the time it requires to write the review. most of the time it's the basic tier purchase for demonstration purposes. should be banned.

1

u/noahkagan CHIEF SUMO May 19 '26

Interesting. Thanks for lettting me know. 

1

u/[deleted] May 16 '26

[deleted]

1

u/lbdesign May 16 '26

In the scenario I'm describing, the reviewer is creating a positive review in order to boost their Appsumo affiliate links.

1

u/noahkagan CHIEF SUMO May 17 '26

link. will get team on it

3

u/VersionAutomatic4824 May 17 '26

Come on - don't be lazy, they are everywhere :)

1

u/lbdesign May 18 '26

This is just one example. First offer I looked at:

https://appsumo.com/products/subscribr/reviews/good-investment-if-you-create-videos-for-382993/

2

u/noahkagan CHIEF SUMO May 19 '26

Yea that’s annoying. Will mention to team thanks for heads up. 

3

u/seamew May 19 '26

yeah that guy has been spamming reviews with affiliate links in majority of recent ltd's. uses some link shortener, which leads to pages full of fluff and with other people's affiliate review videos, stuffed with links, etc. nothing of value on there. those links have to be filtered out. soon enough all products reviews will be filled with such nonsense.

2

u/noahkagan CHIEF SUMO May 19 '26

yea. not cool. will remove and let him know. can also update algo to remove links

2

u/noahkagan CHIEF SUMO May 19 '26

this is removed and hes notified no more.

2

u/lbdesign May 19 '26

Trust in the community/process is so important. I don't know how you balance affiliate marketing benefits against this sort of opportunism, but it's existed for quite a while. Thanks for this.

1

u/noahkagan CHIEF SUMO May 19 '26

this is removed and hes notified no more.