Question: Should OurEcho Recommend Products?

For those of you who have had the opportunity to listen to some of the audio on OurEcho, you know it can really add something extra to a post. The problem is that creating audio does require certain software and equipment. You can download free audio software (like Audacity) from the internet, but often you have to integrate other pieces of software to it to actually create an MP3 (and sometimes that is not intuitive). And that leads me to my dilemma. I would like to recommend certain pieces of software and equipment for purchase, but this goes directly against my desire to make OurEcho completely free.

I’m not trying to make OurEcho Amazon, but I would like to further the use of audio on the site. How would you feel if in a post that detailed how to create audio, I also added links where you could purchase recommended products. I can think of very few instances where I would do this, but audio equipment is one of them. A microphone would be in the $25 range and probably something similar for the software. My goal would be to make sure that people didn’t go out and spend a lot of money on equipment they didn’t need. I would also personally test every piece of equipment and software first to make sure it was simple to use and reliable. I think it would also be helpful if everyone on OurEcho used the same software. It would allow you to help each other.

So what do think? Does recommending certain products and providing links to purchase them, damage the OurEcho experience?

Story ID:	1364
Written by:	OurEcho Admin (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Story type:	OurEcho Community
Location:	Atlanta Ga USA
Year:	2006
Person:	OurEcho