I dislike affiliate and ads just like anyone else, but without them, people just will never find your product. At some point you just have to hope some reviewer picks you up and gives you some boost, but even then how will the reviewer find you?
That was the promise of search engines, before SEO came along and kinda ruined that too.
I suppose the ideal solution is a form of search engine that is basically magical and truly personalized. So that I could search for "most comfortable gym shorts" and the top result would be the world's most comfortable gym shorts (for my physique specifically). And if I searched for just "gym shorts", I'd be shown results in my price point which optimize for different things I care about (comfort, durability, etc).
We got part way there with Amazon, but fake reviews and drop-shipping and counterfeits messed that up as well.
Maybe LLMs can help us out with this is a bit, but I'm skeptical given how quickly profit-motive manages to get in the way of UX.
