Affiliate links are absolutely a form of advertising. It's called CPA (cost per action), and its one of the two major categories of performance advertising. The other category of performance advertising is CPC (cost per click), which is most common in search advertising but is also used by Google for their Adwords on-page ads. Banner ads are often sold as CPM (cost per thousand), which is often called brand advertising as opposed to performance.<p>Setting aside semantics, ad-free publications are expected to be influence-free. The minute a publication starts to optimize their affiliate links, they are allowing their advertising revenue to influence their publication.<p>Finally, as another poster has pointed out: using affiliate links is not her mistake. Her mistake is claiming to be ad-free when she is not. And claiming to be supported solely by donations, when she is not.<p>Both of these mistakes are fraud according to the FTC and also under California law (which applies to her readers in California). She is most exposed to a class-action lawsuit from a lawsuit mill. Literally, there are law firms whose main line menu says "press 4 if you have received a class-action lawsuit from us".<p>Changing the wording in response to a complaint, then changing it back after creating an LLC will be the crucial step that the law firm uses to pursue the case against her personally and against the LLC.