How effective are Skimlinks and Vigilinks? I never liked those double underlined keywords. When a see a site that has those, I immediately think of spam and low quality. Loses all credibility.
Sorry for the late reply. I didn't receive notifications on these new replies.
The double underlined keywords you are thinking of were most likely generated by an in-text monetization vendor like Vibrant Media, Infolinks, etc. They operate on a cost-per-click (sometimes cost-per-action) basis and are a legitimate monetization option that works well for some publishers. The use of them can't necessarily be taken as an indication on the quality of the content - some high quality sites utilize them - but of course, that can be impacted by how one chooses to view it in their mind.
With Skimlinks, you can set it so that no new links are generated at all. That's how I use it, primarily. So if a member posts a link to Amazon, that link is affiliatized. The link goes to the same place, there is no redirecting page, nothing really changes - I just get credit for the same generated through the community that I manage. Only links that are already posted on the community.
You can enable new links to be created with a feature called SkimWords. There is an explanation here:
http://skimlinks.com/skimwords. Basically it works to identify specific product and retailer mentions and links those mentions to where the product can be purchased and simply links to the store mentioned. You can have it identify only store names and not products, as well. These links aren't double underlined, as you can see in the example.
As far as how effective they are, it really depends. Certain niches, more product-focused niches perform better. For some, it is a ton of income. For me, it is an extra bit of money while placing no additional advertisements on the page. It isn't really an ad, like the in-text monetization you referenced or, at least, is less of an ad and more of a complementary thing. For these reasons, I personally like it a lot.
But the idea of the book was to present all legitimate options in depth, and explain how to use them the right way, with the idea that it was unlikely that someone would use them all. Not to suggest that everyone should use all of them.
I don't. Display ads, in-text monetization, classified/thread-based ads, sponsorships, affiliate, product sales, premium memberships, mobile and outpost monetization. Some might look at display ads and say they are spammy, low quality and erode your credibility, some might look at in-text and say that, some might look at premium memberships and say the same thing, etc. All of the methods are fine and say nothing of the quality of the community, but different people perceive them differently. The idea is that you'll pick and choose the methods that work well for you. It's all about knowing your niche and audience and using what performs best for you and what allows you to balance the need for revenue with community experience.
Hope this helps.
Thanks,
Patrick
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Too bad you have a big white rectangle there though 
