---
title: 'Adding 85 Affiliate Links to My Top Posts - What Happened?!'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=MoRqCj_c47I'
video_id: 'MoRqCj_c47I'
date: 2026-07-29
duration_sec: 871
---

# Adding 85 Affiliate Links to My Top Posts - What Happened?!

> Source: [Adding 85 Affiliate Links to My Top Posts - What Happened?!](https://youtube.com/watch?v=MoRqCj_c47I)

## Summary

In this video, the creator experiments with adding 85 affiliate links to nine top articles on cookforfolks.com to test the impact on traffic and income. The goal was to see if Google would penalize the site for appearing spammy, and whether affiliate revenue would increase.

### Key Points

- **Experiment Premise** [00:02] — The creator adds 85 affiliate links across nine top blog posts on cookforfolks.com to test the effect on traffic and income, avoiding a single article with 100 links to prevent spamminess.
- **Convenience Approach** [01:24] — Links are placed naturally using the 'convenience approach'—providing links when they are helpful, like linking to stovetop stuffing when discussing how much to make, rather than product reviews.
- **Natural Integration** [04:18] — Affiliate links are added in context, such as recommending Rubbermaid containers for leftovers or walnuts to add to stuffing, making the links feel organic and useful.
- **Product Table** [05:55] — A table of recommended products (e.g., roaster ovens) is added to several posts, helping consistency and brand association. Photos are included despite Amazon removing built-in product images.
- **Traffic Impact** [08:24] — Traffic showed no negative effect from the links; the only drop was seasonal (Christmas), with a 35% overall decrease in traffic after the holiday period.
- **Revenue Increase** [10:42] — Affiliate income more than doubled from $13.59 in the 30 days before the change to $35.52 after—a 225% increase, despite 43% less traffic due to seasonality.

### Conclusion

Adding 85 affiliate links to top posts did not harm traffic or trigger a Google penalty. Affiliate revenue increased significantly even with seasonal traffic decline, proving that strategic link placement can boost income without SEO risk.

## Transcript

happens when you add 85 affiliate links to a website on a handful of Articles to a website on a handful of Articles over a period of just a couple of
probably know that we like to test stuff here on income school and we test it on our own websites if you are new here welcome thanks for checking out this you and that you find it a little bit interesting and hopefully kind of fun so
here's what happened we decided to take cook for folks.com this is one of our websites and add a bunch of affiliate links to it but the original premise was what happens if we add 100 affiliate links to one article and I'm pretty sure
suddenly loses a whole bunch of its traffic because Google really hates that it starts to feel a lot like spam when it's just full of affiliate links not to it's just full of affiliate links not to mention that it's really hard to add
and have it feel at all natural or organic and we're all about natural and organic here not necessarily just in the food that we eat but definitely in the way that we try to get traffic from Google and other sources so instead we
decided to spread that out over the top nine or 10 blog posts and what we ended up with was 85 brand new affiliate links on nine blog posts now giving credit where it's due Nathan's actually the one that did the work but I want to show you
and why we used the strategy and then we're going to dive into exactly what happened so here is one of the Articles now the reason that we chose the Articles we did is because at the time over the 30 days or 28 days Google
analytics for chooses that as sort of its time frame over the 28 days leading up to the day that Nathan did this these nine articles that we went with were the top nine articles on the website some of those have moved because of seasonality
which I think will become apparent so what he did was he went through these opportunities to kind of naturally add in in some affiliate links for example we're talking about stuffing here how much to make so what does he do he links
know who's going to buy their stove top on Amazon but maybe they're like you store again and I can get it here in one or two days so you know what we'll just
order on Amazon this is the approach that we call and we have another video where I guess I'll go ahead and link to it right here we have an approach to affiliate strategy and well actually for unque approaches and one of them is
called the convenience approach in this approach it's not about reviewing a product it's about just conveniently giving people a link at times when talking about stuffing here and we're mentioning stov top and saying look you
can buy a bunch of boxes it's actually cheaper see for yourself go over here to to Amazon and buy your stove top stuffing we're conveniently placing this another little truth bomb here and that is that one of the reasons to include
affiliate links especially to sites like Amazon even if it's a product that to buy is if you can get them to at least do the click to go check something note if you opt to order box stuffing
individual boxes it's actually cheaper go see for yourself there's a little bit of interest there a little bit of intrigue and with that like okay I'm here it's only giving me the option to buy them one at a time but they probably
had a bundle at one point that came with like two boxes or five boxes and it turned out cheaper at the time to buy them one box at a time so I'm feeling a little bit cheated Nathan but that's cuz Amazon's listings change all the time
specific things like that all right so as we scroll through here further another one here we're talking about you know when to make more stuffing uh you might want on Amazon it'll do what you need but if you really want some
additional features here's a more expensive one that has those extra features and you might feel like maybe that's Overkill K but frankly if if I should I get to help me with this I might say a roasting pan and you know
what you can get a really really simple one that's just got a dial you set the temperature you're done but you know what there's some that like they have some pretty cool features they just cost more here's here's one that I have seen
seems to work pretty well that's what we're doing here and so it still feels Lings right by each other and then he mentions here but you know what I really like this grill smoker and I know he does because he has this exact grill
smoker and it's really cool I know because I've used it I tested it out for a video once and it was awesome so there's four right so far then we have one here about Rubbermaid storage containers this is because we're talking
when you're done with your Christmas dinner and there's a whole bunch of stuffing left over well you know what go buy some Rubbermaid storage containers there you go here he mentions like these are things that you can do to add to the
stuffing to make it go further right you can add some nuts I really like walnuts here's my personal favorite walnuts and guess what you can buy them on Amazon taada again if we can get the click then if some if that person makes a purchase
get a commission no matter what they chose to buy then here's the other thing that we did because frankly adding 10 affiliate links to most blog posts is a stretch it took him like I said a couple of hours two to three hours for him to
go add these links to nine blog posts so he did this same process on nine blog posts he probably added this whole paragraph right just threw it in right way that felt natural that didn't feel like all of a sudden we went from
previous author boom new author I've done that even for my own post where I in something and it just takes time to find just the right places and look for it go a little further we added in this little table this is about the most
basic way to do this could we design the table to look a little cooler uh of products that we actually have and use which they are then why don't we add a photo of each one Amazon recently took away the photos with the link built in
where you can actually use the product photos from Amazon so anybody who had a all just look like broken links which kind of sinks but if we have these products then we might as well go ahead and just add a photo uh so maybe that's
list here that we can include on several posts the exact same list of a handful a lot of these things and that we actually use and that we actually actually use and that we actually recommend this is another approach that
strategies and essentially it's where you just have some specific products that you use on a regular basis that just kind of become part of you and part of your brand and people just know that they're associated with you things that
you recommend fairly regularly it's actually really helpful to be consistent by the way from post to post when you say on one blog post I recommend this different blog post because you either had AI or some freelancer write the
Articles and they are inconsistent and they pick a totally different crockpot somebody who reads those two blog posts is going to recognize that they're not the same and they're going to wonder how genuine you really are an even better
way to do this by the way which isn't what we did here because we decided to go with the top blog posts on the entire website no matter what topic they were about but if if you decide to do this by category you can go ahead and make a
little table like this for each of the different categories on your website so you know if we had one that was specifically for you know soups right going to use as soups that you don't really use with much other stuff uh
maybe we're going to have a table that's for grilling roasting that kind of stuff looking to roast a turkey a ham or whatever like a roasting pan is a great thing to have or like a roaster oven great thing to have and a roasting pan
both have these things or you know I like to have a single Le use foil pan catch all the drippings on my turkey and still base with them that kind of stuff put my good roasting pan in the smoker and have it get all black and Smokey
every single time my wife doesn't like it when I do that uh I end up scrubbing so anyway having a table like this and having it be a little bit of a better fit to the actual content in the article is going to be the even better way to go
but this you know it did something it was a first step so we did this nine that were top articles at the time on the website so now what happened as a result well two things that we want to look at we want to know what impact this
had or did not have on traffic on the website you see because adding a lot of affiliate links can make your content look really spammy and can hurt traffic in fact it can make your content look unhelpful and really hurt the traffic of
your entire website so did we get hit as a result of this well let's look at the Google analytics oh my goodness look at that drop right there in December what oh it's on Christmas Yeah Christmas and you know
the weeks after Christmas tend to be lower than before when did we make all these changes oh it was back here on the 10th all right so at least over this time frame we can be certain for 15 days 14 days that it didn't have any impact
what if we look at the time after that so let's look it from December 29th or even from the 25th on well we'll start at the 23rd just so there's the daily numbers over the following month or the following 28 or
so days we had the drop after Christmas totally normal by the way on all cooking totally normal by the way on all cooking websites basically and no I don't see a major any sort of major shift seeing that Google recognized that our content
suddenly got spammy let's look at s then because we're way past January 20th by because I want to be able to see the daily numbers all right this is including even today so that's not real right right but other than that I mean
look at that as flat as can be so it didn't do anything traffic-wise so what did it do to the income well when we look at the 30 days which is the report that Amazon gave us the 30 days leading up to this change the income from
affiliate links was $13.59 I'm embarrassed to say it we have dramatically under monetized cook forol decom we make quite a bit more than that from ads but the affiliate work on that website just the work hasn't been done
and even work we did here was not very customized to the content other than those few links within the post that table not very custom and frankly we just don't have a strong affiliate strategy on that website yet coming soon
all right back to this so what happened to the income it more than doubled like overnight in fact the 30 days following this time period the income was this time period the income was $352 that's 225% more than before but we
did it with 43% less traffic on the website so that's actually pretty heartening if you can say that heartening the opposite of disheartening because even with substantially less traffic in the post Christmas time frame
which is again a normal seasonal thing on this website we made 2.25 times as much money it's only $16.93 more so you could argue maybe that wasn't worth Nathan's time but compound that over several months and let's look at the
traffic on this website increases that's pretty substantial given that all he had to do is spend a couple hours working on nine of the Articles of the website I also want to point out three of the articles that he worked on were very
very very much high value articles in the Thanksgiving to Christmas time frame but not so much after so there were three articles out of these top nine that lost more than 50% of their traffic and in fact the average loss on those
three I got to calculate this real quick all right the average drop in traffic for these three articles was 88% basically they dropped off a cliff and here they were how much stuffing in the United States at least stuffing is one
of those things you eat on Thanksgiving and on Christmas and basically almost never the rest of the year the next one mashed potatoes now mashed potatoes isn't as uncommon but it's a very common thing to have on Christmas and
Thanksgiving and then the other one where to put turkey in the oven how many people are roasting turkeys on dates other than Thanksgiving and maybe Christmas we do Ham on Christmas that's what my wife grew up
with but you know I grew up with ham turkey whatever it's usually something special like that and turkey is just something that we don't usually do a whole lot except for during this time frame so it's not a surprise to me that
those lost a ton when I look at the site traffic overall the drop was 35% after Christmas 35% less traffic with two and a quar times more revenue from Affiliates not bad so there you have it that's what happened when we added 85
articles it doesn't seem to have had any effect yet on the site performance we'll pushes out one of their mean nasty updates but I'm also excited to take
this a step further not further as in doing more of the same but rather further as in actually implementing our affiliate strategies that we normally do and that we teach on this website as you may know I'm still working on my project
double time website as my primary focus but this website is one that I'm very that's what we're going to be talking about here on this channel in addition to project double time which is going really well by the way the YouTube
channel for my project double time website is monetized now I am within a week of that the daily income is such that it should put me at about $100 a month just in ad revenue from YouTube and it's just steadily increasing as
and subscribers on that channel continue to grow so I'm excited for that so many good things happening now and uh I've also seen some really cool exciting people in the blogging space this is working and it's really awesome we just
need to take the right approach and that's another aspect of what we're channel over the coming months thanks for joining me today and for hanging out bit on some of these numbers from the work that fortunately I got to have
Nathan do that's it for today thanks for joining me we'll see you all next [Music] time time [Music]