7 ms·

Browsarity (YC W10) Allows You To Donate Affiliate Fees To Charity

52 points by whyleym 17y ago

jfarmer 17y ago
How is this different than Eric Kerr's Browse for a Cause? http://browseforacause.com/ http://browseforacause.com/ (Unless Eric is involved, of course.)
- eventmad 17y ago
  for starters its viral.. it tracks not only how much you brought in, but how much everyone you've invited brought in, and how much everyone they've invited brought in etc.
  - jfarmer 17y ago
    I mean, ok, but that's not going to make or break the product. You said that was for starters -- what else? Also, what type of corporate entity is Browsarity? Is it actually a 501(c)(3)?
    - pmjordan 17y ago
      Wouldn't being a non-profit cause problems with investment and potential exits?
      - jfarmer 17y ago
        Yes, but the name of the product is "Browsarity," which is a portmanteau of browser and charity. And the positioning on the landing page is about giving, donating, etc. So I guess my question is, is this actually a charity? Well, ok, I should be fair. That's a rhetorical question, because I'm 99% sure the answer is "no." So I suppose my real questions are: 1. Isn't that a conflict of interest? 2. How do I know the money is going where you say it's going? 3. If you're donating this revenue to charities via the affiliate fees you pocket, are you getting the tax benefits of that? i.e., Amazon credits your affiliate account via the activity of your users. You then "donate" that to the Red Cross (or whomever), which comes with tax benefits.
    - pg 17y ago
      Actually true virality does tend to make or break the things that have it.
      - jfarmer 17y ago
        I meant this, specifically: "it tracks not only how much you brought in, but how much everyone you've invited brought in, and how much everyone they've invited brought in etc." Obviously if their viral loop works that will make the product. I'm saying the above will have no impact on whether their product is viral or not (speaking from experience). I'd even be willing to bet on an A/B test against their viral coefficient. I read the original comment to say, "We are different because we show you the number of dollars your whole social network brings in." That's cool. I like numbers. But that feature isn't rocket fuel. Instead I should have taken it to mean, "We're not that different in principle, but we're focused on making charitable giving viral, like Causes for the web at large." So mea culpa.
  - axod 17y ago
    I don't think you can really call that 'viral'. It has a feature that has the potential, if people use it, to make it viral. But TBH I'm skeptical.
    - jfarmer 17y ago
      If you use the plugin, I think it could work. The loop is not great right now, but the two hooks are email importing and Facebook feed posting. Obviously Causes works, although the donation step occurs at a different place in the funnel, but I don't see in principle why it couldn't. It'd be like Beacon, but you only broadcast messages saying you donated XYZ to ABC charity via Browsarity.
javery 17y ago
The countdown to their affiliate accounts being shutdown starts now.
- groaner 17y ago
  Honest question: what does it really take to get an affiliate account shut down? If I understood how this works, it simply replaces the URL of the affiliate link on the page I'm viewing. If that's all it takes to redirect the affiliate payment, what's there to prevent a rogue Firefox extension that secretly replaces every amazon.com link with one that deposits into the author's account? How about a proxy server that scans for these URLs and rewrites them so they make the server's operator rich? While it's good to see this being used for a good cause, it feels as if exactly the same method can be serving more nefarious purposes. Perhaps this will require oversight from the whoever runs the affiliate program, and I'm having a hard time imagining how they'd be happy if a third party is taking a cut of these fees.
  - illumin8 17y ago
    I believe the issue is that Amazon and others specifically forbid affiliates from overwriting or replacing other affiliates links with their own. But yes, you are correct, some of the more "successful" (if you can call it that) Windows malware has taken the form of IE6 browser plugins and toolbars that overwrite affiliate links in any page you browse to. I can seriously imagine some enterprising 16 year old somewhere in Eastern Europe making 5-6 figure monthly income from this back in the early 2000s.
    - natrius 17y ago
      Easy fix: Audit a random selection of affiliate referrers by checking for the affiliate code in the actual source of the page. If it isn't there, either disable that affiliate account or check more of that account's referrers, denying credit for any pages that don't contain the affiliate code.
    - stealthyc2010 17y ago
      If I understand this correctly, it doesn't overwrite existing affiliate links. I feel it should though, its my browser after all.
erickerr 17y ago
While I did make and launch http://browseforacause.com http://browseforacause.com a few months ago (which this may or may not have been inspired from), I welcome this launching - any innovation to donate more money to charity can really only be a good thing.
- pg 17y ago
  Thanks for the kind words. I can tell you they didn't find out about browseforacause till after they'd started working on browsarity. They started out doing something else with affiliate links and it morphed into this.
- chrischen 17y ago
  There are quite a few competitors in this affiliate-charity donating space. I launched mine: shopwisely.org almost two years ago. I don't really maintain it anymore so all luck to browsarity and hopefully they turn out more successful than my venture.
DanBlake 17y ago
The problem with all these programs is that its arguable if this generates any value for the company's paying the affiliate fees. Usually a company is not happy with the idea of paying for a customer they already (would have) had. However, sites like skimlinks seem to be growing (and staying in business) which I think surprised alot of people. Lets all not forget that these programs mainly survive around 2 affiliate programs- eBay and Amazon. Getting canned from either would be disaster.
- davidu 17y ago
  This.
- qeorge 17y ago
  I think you're dead on about eBay and Amazon being the main sources of income, but we should give them a chance to address this. You have to figure they thought of this on day 1. Specifically, I think this is not moot: "arguable if this generates any value" Making the association that buying from Amazon == donating to charity is worth money to them. Also, at least with eBay, the big money in affiliate revenue is signing up new users. You get paid about ~1.5% of the transaction price vs. $25 every time a new user places a bid (they don't even have to win). So at worst these companies are paying the big bonus once, and they're still making a profit on every sale. tl;dr: there is a value add here, unlike than cookie dropping.
icey 17y ago
While I think this is a really cool idea; I wonder what the investment strategy could possibly be for funding a company like this. I have a really hard time envisioning how you go from this to any kind of exit short of acquhire. (I'm genuinely curious, for anyone who feels like speculating.)
hockeybias 17y ago
Nice!
lzell 17y ago
Allows you to donate affiliate fees to charity?! Bullshit. Should read: Forces businesses to donate part of their profit margin to charity and browsarity.
- pg 17y ago
  Man, the comments here are getting like TechCrunch comments.
  - lzell 17y ago
    Well you can color me skeptical. This is the way I see something like this coming into being: 1. Someone thinks of the clever idea of overwriting non-affiliate urls with an affiliate url of their account. 2. In realizing that no one would ever install this, they think "how can I convince people to add this to their browser and take a cut of the profit?" 3. Charity! I hope I am way wrong. And man, the news in here is really becoming a TechCrunch aggregator.
    - axod 17y ago
      How do we know how many url minifiers are doing just this? Maybe bit.ly isn't such a crazy idea after all. ;)
    - pg 17y ago
      What makes your comment like a TechCrunch comment (and this one even more so) is that instead of giving the startup the benefit of the doubt, you do the same thing in the other direction. And that's particularly easy to do with a newly launched startup, since the right way to launch most things is to launch very early-- way before what you've built is formidable enough to stand up to determined criticism. Why don't you try giving the founders the benefit of the doubt instead? I can assure you they'd give a project of yours the same.
      - blasdel 17y ago
        There's a difference between the "benefit of the doubt" and cheerleading. A lost of these critical comments could be phrased more politely (like "how do you plan to get away with this"), but they're all fundamentally reflective of what a middling idea this is in general, and what a terrible idea this is for anything couched as a 'startup'.
chrischen 17y ago
Hey I started something like this in high school: shopwisely.org. Glad to know I wasn't crazy (people said I was crazy for doing it). Some things I learned: nonprofits don't like to raise money for no reason, and don't like to raise money to receive 2 months later. The service will have to be super passive because people are lazy and will often forgo an extra step in before purchasing.
- jrockway 17y ago
  It's a browser plugin, right? Click install, money trickles into the charity. I would probably use this if the plugin runs on my OS of choice. Why not give a bit of free money to charity?
  - chrischen 17y ago
    By the way, shopwisely.org gives 100% of commissions, and is a bookmarklet which works in ie, firefox, chrome, and safari. But once you get the users on your side you'll have to get the merchants on your side by convincing them it will help business. Also the affiliate communities frown on "stealing" tracking cookies. They hate what UPromise does, even though I've argued it's not wrong at all. I stopped doing it because I stopped believing in the "world changingness" of the whole idea. a) nonprofits don't like to raise money for the sake of raising money, and it usually took months before the money could be sent out. So they couldn't plan how to use the money raised. b)the idea isn't really better than direct donation except we're introducing a new middleman, and making it less transparent because the merchant now pays charities with money they get from the end consumer. > Why not give a bit of free money to charity? I want to mention that it's not really free money. In the end the consumer pays because the merchant pays.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
ryanb 17y ago
I'm quite surprised that this idea got YC funding. They must have a great team.
mgrouchy 17y ago
This is very similar to what a local startup here in Ottawa is doing. http://dogoodhq.com/ http://dogoodhq.com/ , they replace your normal advertisements with calls to actions, green initiatives and campaigns from charitable organizations. They also have been nominated for a web award at SXSW for technical achievement I believe.

52 points by whyleym 17y ago

How is this different than Eric Kerr's Browse for a Cause? http://browseforacause.com/ http://browseforacause.com/ (Unless Eric is involved, of course.)

eventmad 17y ago
for starters its viral.. it tracks not only how much you brought in, but how much everyone you've invited brought in, and how much everyone they've invited brought in etc.
- jfarmer 17y ago
  I mean, ok, but that's not going to make or break the product. You said that was for starters -- what else? Also, what type of corporate entity is Browsarity? Is it actually a 501(c)(3)?
  - pmjordan 17y ago
    Wouldn't being a non-profit cause problems with investment and potential exits?
    - jfarmer 17y ago
      Yes, but the name of the product is "Browsarity," which is a portmanteau of browser and charity. And the positioning on the landing page is about giving, donating, etc. So I guess my question is, is this actually a charity? Well, ok, I should be fair. That's a rhetorical question, because I'm 99% sure the answer is "no." So I suppose my real questions are: 1. Isn't that a conflict of interest? 2. How do I know the money is going where you say it's going? 3. If you're donating this revenue to charities via the affiliate fees you pocket, are you getting the tax benefits of that? i.e., Amazon credits your affiliate account via the activity of your users. You then "donate" that to the Red Cross (or whomever), which comes with tax benefits.
  - pg 17y ago
    Actually true virality does tend to make or break the things that have it.
    - jfarmer 17y ago
      I meant this, specifically: "it tracks not only how much you brought in, but how much everyone you've invited brought in, and how much everyone they've invited brought in etc." Obviously if their viral loop works that will make the product. I'm saying the above will have no impact on whether their product is viral or not (speaking from experience). I'd even be willing to bet on an A/B test against their viral coefficient. I read the original comment to say, "We are different because we show you the number of dollars your whole social network brings in." That's cool. I like numbers. But that feature isn't rocket fuel. Instead I should have taken it to mean, "We're not that different in principle, but we're focused on making charitable giving viral, like Causes for the web at large." So mea culpa.
- axod 17y ago
  I don't think you can really call that 'viral'. It has a feature that has the potential, if people use it, to make it viral. But TBH I'm skeptical.
  - jfarmer 17y ago
    If you use the plugin, I think it could work. The loop is not great right now, but the two hooks are email importing and Facebook feed posting. Obviously Causes works, although the donation step occurs at a different place in the funnel, but I don't see in principle why it couldn't. It'd be like Beacon, but you only broadcast messages saying you donated XYZ to ABC charity via Browsarity.

javery 17y ago

The countdown to their affiliate accounts being shutdown starts now.

groaner 17y ago
Honest question: what does it really take to get an affiliate account shut down? If I understood how this works, it simply replaces the URL of the affiliate link on the page I'm viewing. If that's all it takes to redirect the affiliate payment, what's there to prevent a rogue Firefox extension that secretly replaces every amazon.com link with one that deposits into the author's account? How about a proxy server that scans for these URLs and rewrites them so they make the server's operator rich? While it's good to see this being used for a good cause, it feels as if exactly the same method can be serving more nefarious purposes. Perhaps this will require oversight from the whoever runs the affiliate program, and I'm having a hard time imagining how they'd be happy if a third party is taking a cut of these fees.
- illumin8 17y ago
  I believe the issue is that Amazon and others specifically forbid affiliates from overwriting or replacing other affiliates links with their own. But yes, you are correct, some of the more "successful" (if you can call it that) Windows malware has taken the form of IE6 browser plugins and toolbars that overwrite affiliate links in any page you browse to. I can seriously imagine some enterprising 16 year old somewhere in Eastern Europe making 5-6 figure monthly income from this back in the early 2000s.
  - natrius 17y ago
    Easy fix: Audit a random selection of affiliate referrers by checking for the affiliate code in the actual source of the page. If it isn't there, either disable that affiliate account or check more of that account's referrers, denying credit for any pages that don't contain the affiliate code.
  - stealthyc2010 17y ago
    If I understand this correctly, it doesn't overwrite existing affiliate links. I feel it should though, its my browser after all.

erickerr 17y ago

While I did make and launch http://browseforacause.com http://browseforacause.com a few months ago (which this may or may not have been inspired from), I welcome this launching - any innovation to donate more money to charity can really only be a good thing.

pg 17y ago
Thanks for the kind words. I can tell you they didn't find out about browseforacause till after they'd started working on browsarity. They started out doing something else with affiliate links and it morphed into this.
chrischen 17y ago
There are quite a few competitors in this affiliate-charity donating space. I launched mine: shopwisely.org almost two years ago. I don't really maintain it anymore so all luck to browsarity and hopefully they turn out more successful than my venture.

DanBlake 17y ago

The problem with all these programs is that its arguable if this generates any value for the company's paying the affiliate fees. Usually a company is not happy with the idea of paying for a customer they already (would have) had. However, sites like skimlinks seem to be growing (and staying in business) which I think surprised alot of people. Lets all not forget that these programs mainly survive around 2 affiliate programs- eBay and Amazon. Getting canned from either would be disaster.

davidu 17y ago
This.
qeorge 17y ago
I think you're dead on about eBay and Amazon being the main sources of income, but we should give them a chance to address this. You have to figure they thought of this on day 1. Specifically, I think this is not moot: "arguable if this generates any value" Making the association that buying from Amazon == donating to charity is worth money to them. Also, at least with eBay, the big money in affiliate revenue is signing up new users. You get paid about ~1.5% of the transaction price vs. $25 every time a new user places a bid (they don't even have to win). So at worst these companies are paying the big bonus once, and they're still making a profit on every sale. tl;dr: there is a value add here, unlike than cookie dropping.

icey 17y ago

While I think this is a really cool idea; I wonder what the investment strategy could possibly be for funding a company like this. I have a really hard time envisioning how you go from this to any kind of exit short of acquhire. (I'm genuinely curious, for anyone who feels like speculating.)

hockeybias 17y ago

Nice!

lzell 17y ago

Allows you to donate affiliate fees to charity?! Bullshit. Should read: Forces businesses to donate part of their profit margin to charity and browsarity.

pg 17y ago
Man, the comments here are getting like TechCrunch comments.
- lzell 17y ago
  Well you can color me skeptical. This is the way I see something like this coming into being: 1. Someone thinks of the clever idea of overwriting non-affiliate urls with an affiliate url of their account. 2. In realizing that no one would ever install this, they think "how can I convince people to add this to their browser and take a cut of the profit?" 3. Charity! I hope I am way wrong. And man, the news in here is really becoming a TechCrunch aggregator.
  - axod 17y ago
    How do we know how many url minifiers are doing just this? Maybe bit.ly isn't such a crazy idea after all. ;)
  - pg 17y ago
    What makes your comment like a TechCrunch comment (and this one even more so) is that instead of giving the startup the benefit of the doubt, you do the same thing in the other direction. And that's particularly easy to do with a newly launched startup, since the right way to launch most things is to launch very early-- way before what you've built is formidable enough to stand up to determined criticism. Why don't you try giving the founders the benefit of the doubt instead? I can assure you they'd give a project of yours the same.
    - blasdel 17y ago
      There's a difference between the "benefit of the doubt" and cheerleading. A lost of these critical comments could be phrased more politely (like "how do you plan to get away with this"), but they're all fundamentally reflective of what a middling idea this is in general, and what a terrible idea this is for anything couched as a 'startup'.

chrischen 17y ago

Hey I started something like this in high school: shopwisely.org. Glad to know I wasn't crazy (people said I was crazy for doing it). Some things I learned: nonprofits don't like to raise money for no reason, and don't like to raise money to receive 2 months later. The service will have to be super passive because people are lazy and will often forgo an extra step in before purchasing.

jrockway 17y ago
It's a browser plugin, right? Click install, money trickles into the charity. I would probably use this if the plugin runs on my OS of choice. Why not give a bit of free money to charity?
- chrischen 17y ago
  By the way, shopwisely.org gives 100% of commissions, and is a bookmarklet which works in ie, firefox, chrome, and safari. But once you get the users on your side you'll have to get the merchants on your side by convincing them it will help business. Also the affiliate communities frown on "stealing" tracking cookies. They hate what UPromise does, even though I've argued it's not wrong at all. I stopped doing it because I stopped believing in the "world changingness" of the whole idea. a) nonprofits don't like to raise money for the sake of raising money, and it usually took months before the money could be sent out. So they couldn't plan how to use the money raised. b)the idea isn't really better than direct donation except we're introducing a new middleman, and making it less transparent because the merchant now pays charities with money they get from the end consumer. > Why not give a bit of free money to charity? I want to mention that it's not really free money. In the end the consumer pays because the merchant pays.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]

ryanb 17y ago

I'm quite surprised that this idea got YC funding. They must have a great team.

mgrouchy 17y ago

This is very similar to what a local startup here in Ottawa is doing. http://dogoodhq.com/ http://dogoodhq.com/ , they replace your normal advertisements with calls to actions, green initiatives and campaigns from charitable organizations. They also have been nominated for a web award at SXSW for technical achievement I believe.