Wal-Mart.com USA, LLC

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Urban Legends and Affiliate Programs

While reading at MyLot.com I found a post that indicated that Wal-mart was donating 5% of online sales to the Washington DC Community Center for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender folks (The Center).

According to this news article, this 5% donation was seen as proof that Wal-mart had a "gay agenda," and The American Family Association (AFA) was encouraging it's members to boycott Wal-Mart during Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving) because of it's supposed support for same-sex marriage.

Upon further research I found this report to be inaccurate. It seems that The Center (Home for GLBT in Metro DC) joined an affiliate program that Wal-Mart offers to web site and blog owners through LinkShare (the company that runs affiliate programs for many online stores).

About.com has designated this confusing and misleading campaign an Urban Legend, and states that it is not clear why the AFA found it necessary to mislead it's followers in this regard.

In short, Wal-Mart does not have a "gay agenda." They simply have an affiliate program as do most online stores. Many web site and blog owners (both homosexual and heterosexual) have joined this affiliate program to make a bit of extra money by posting links to Wal-Mart and other online shopping sites.

For those of us who support the GLBT community there is some good news to report. During my research of this Urban Legend, I discovered that Wal-Mart joined the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce earlier this year. And they have pledged to sponsor some of its programs.

This is just one more reason to like Wal-Mart.


LinkShare  Referral  Prg

For more information about joining Wal-Mart's affiliate program, click on this image to join LinkShare.

3 comments:

Dawn said...

The AFA looooves to give out incorrect info...

Angie said...

The more I read about them, the clearer that is becoming to me.

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Interesting stuff