What if the site is genuinely useful, though? I like The Wirecutter for technology opinions, and affiliate links are the only way they make money. It seems like a win-win(-win) to me, if the products are actually things the visitors want to buy. They're a more informed and more satisfied consumer, Amazon (or whoever) gets another sale, and the blogger gets a commission.

There's a big distinction between The Wirecutter and other sites, though. The Wirecutter specifically goes out of its way to do in depth testing with set criteria and standards for their suggestions. If you look at their headphones reviews, they typically compare several models with a variety of audio experts to validate their choices.

If another site can come up with that kind of high intensity writing, that's one thing. It's completely different if it's just a random person doing it -- that's at best the opinion of one person who's done work. At worst, someone lied and wrote a recipe or an article without doing any actual testing or research.

>> What if the site is genuinely useful, though?

I'm perfectly fine with that. Serious Eats uses affiliate links (and also has other advertising on their site). I have a ton of respect for the work it takes to do what they do.

What I'm not okay with is someone building tons of Wordpress sites and filling them with stock photos of food and recipes they found online, and linking to Amazon.

Yes, hopefully those sites will not be successful because they do not provide any value to consumers. I don't see how sites like that could get high rankings on search engines, though. Who actually wants to see those? Then again, I know nothing about SEO.

What makes you assume his content is crap? Didn't he say he has a writer who is an expert in the niche?