Books, Beans & Things will recommend things.
Some of those recommendations may eventually use affiliate links. I do not think that is inherently a problem. The problem begins when the link chooses the content. If I start with, What can I sell?, everything downstream gets distorted. The article becomes a path toward a transaction. Weak distinctions disappear. Every product becomes excellent. Every list becomes longer because more links create more chances to convert.
I want Books, Beans, & Things to work in the opposite direction.
Experience → contribution → recommendation → optional transaction.
Something gets noticed. It gets used, read, tried, questioned, compared, or revisited. We decide whether it genuinely helped and who it might help. Only then does a purchase link become useful.
That is why we use recommendation maturity. A thing can be encountered without being endorsed. It can be worth exploring without yet being Worth Carrying. And a recommendation should be allowed to change after more experience.
Sometimes the useful conclusion will be: save your money.
Sometimes the best resource will not have an affiliate program.
Sometimes the link will point to somebody else’s excellent work.
And sometimes the product will be ours.
The governing question stays the same either way:
Would this recommendation still deserve to exist if there were no commission attached?
If the answer is no, it probably does not belong here.