Is this ehtical????

Hi Neill,

Interesting concept, and not necessarily unethical.

As long as you contact the merchants to make sure they are okay with this (I don't know why they would mind more sales), AND if you have an affiliate disclosure somewhere fairly obvious on your site (so your visitors know).

All the best,
Michael

Is this ethical? Just put yourself into the merchant shoes, I guess they will not be happy but it will provide a good comparison information to the users if your review are making sense.

The answer here really depends on the affiliate sites TOS you agreed to. Start there.

The rest of the answers depend entirely on how and what you say on your site. An honest comparison would not be illegal or unethical. Failing to disclose your sites purpose to make sales might be both.

This is perfectly ethical in my view.

Within your comparison chart you are still promoting their program and site, just laying out the facts between all the different sites... In some cases their product may do better in a category then another program and vice versa, as long as the comparison isn't bias you are good

In my experience, I have done this a lot in there has been only 1 (ONE) case that the advertiser said anything to me, and that was simply, we don't want to be on your comparison chart.

Kind of related, kind of not....

I had a private label medical device that I was selling from my own website. It was being dropshipped from the manufacturer. I was the only one selling this brand, since it was my private label.

I realized that if somebody Googled the product name, they would only find one website selling it, which is not so credible. So, I created a dozen or so "competitor" websites, all offering the product at different prices. I then created a review/price comparison site and listed all of the different places that were selling my product. All the sites were also added to Google Shopping.

Sales quadrupled in less than a week.

This is not exactly what you are asking, but I thought it was a little relevant. If I understand you correctly, you have a product that you dropship direct from the manufacturer and you are also an affiliate of others that dropship from the manufacturer. I do not see anything unethical about giving visitors facts about where to get it for different prices. If there is nothing in the TOS of your affiliate agreements that says you cannot list your affiliate link on the same site as links to competitors, then you are good to go.

Let me tell you a story. Quite a few years back I tried to take on Newegg. I originally signed up with one distributor, however Neweggs retail prices were cheaper than my wholesale cost. So logically I added another distributor and I did this till I had about 5 distributors and had the same results. It turned out even though these distributors publicaly said they were in direct competition with each other, they were in fact not. They shared the same board members. So for them, more or less though legal, it was always a win win. It all depends how you view things.

From my point of view its totally ethical and one of the best marketing concept ever. if you can successfully do it then you will be a great gainer without any doubt.
thanks

I think it's a grey zone. But as long as you contact those merchants you should be fine. I wouldn't do it before contacting and getting consent though.

Either way, your making money, and selling products for the vendor. Nothing wrong with that