As far as I remember, they indeed are in severe money troubles. I guess they are, if they need to get pennies off affiliate links. Because, let's be honest here, how much money do they expect to make? My guess is that they will make around a couple thousands a month. What do they expect to do with that, especially at the expense of looking cheap as fuck?
Every penny counts. Even if it's only a couple of thousand every month that's part of a year of dev time paid for, who could be focussed on infrastructure efficiency etc.
