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I simply do not understand the point of Refer.ly . What problem are they trying to solve? Sure, there'll be a lot of people who will spam refer.ly links all ove

by chinmoy 14y ago

I simply do not understand the point of Refer.ly . What problem are they trying to solve? Sure, there'll be a lot of people who will spam refer.ly links all over the internet, but you don't get far with that. Unless, they pivot into something else, I don't see why they should succeed.

slap_shot 14y ago
This. I constantly wonder this when I see these companies. Dan Siroker of Optimizely mentioned something interesting in a talk he gave at Rock Health. Before he founded Optimizely, he and his co-founders tried to reward people who could convert their Twitter followers in a similar fashion. He concluded that "we couldn't pay people enough to spam their friends." I worked for a startup that was essentially trying this same thing. It became clear, pretty quickly, that we also couldn't pay people enough to make them spam their friends with deals. Referly seems to be making a name for themselves, so I'm curious how they turn out.
- dmor 14y ago
  We're certainly not fans of spam. But a well timed recommendation of something I actually might want to buy, from person I know, at a time when I'm ready to make the purchase has a great chance of converting. You don't have to send tons of links (in fact that really doesn't work, people just unfriend you) - you need to send the right link at the right time. I've been obsessed with the concept of perfect information applied to the web since I worked on Whrrl several years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_information The reality is that there are huge existing businesses with names you recognize like Mary Kay and Tupperware who take advantage of the power of friends selling to friends, but with them you are limited to their inventory, you pay an upfront cost (buying samples and baseline inventory), and a lot of labor/time to make a sale. The goal with Referly is to broaden the products you refer, eliminate up front expenses, and reduce the amount of effort to generate a sale. This might not be for the HN audience, who can make $100/hour coding, but for a stay-at-home Mom who blogs and sells stuff on Etsy Referly is a great option for additional income. It's also great for anyone who has every written a blog post listing their top 10 book recommendations. As to why you should use us rather than your own Amazon tag - we get a better commission rate because we have economy of scale. And you can refer products from any of these websites http://refer.ly/merchants http://refer.ly/merchants
  - bduerst 14y ago
    Perfect Information is a misnomer, because even when people have perfect information they cannot be expected to act rationally. Mary Kay and Tupperware tapped into the western womans' need to meet in person and converse with friends. Referly is trying to tap into the broadcasting phenomenon, or "bragging", that occurs over social networks, which in this instance translates to spam.
    - dmor 14y ago
      The information is perfect, not the person. It increases the expected value of an interaction, but doesn't guarantee it (free will and all that).
  - tisme 14y ago
    > power of friends selling to friends That's one of the reasons I will never buy any product of theirs. You don't get to me through my friends. I consider abusing private friendships for commercial gain un-ethical.
  - GrowthHacker 14y ago
    Speaking of using amazon, how are are you able to offer "cashback" or incentives through them, isn't that against the terms of Amazon's affiliate program?
    - dmor 14y ago
      biz dev, dear growth hacker.
- bduerst 14y ago
  >we couldn't pay people enough to spam their friends. This is exactly the flaw that I see with Referly. Not just with friends - you're diluting the quality of you communications when you become an advertiser, and in order to make it worth your time you're going to have to spam.
mbesto 14y ago
Agreed. I don't see any logical way how this can scale and can fend itself against being gamed. (note - that doesn't mean they can't make money. Looks like a pump-n-dump to me)
- neurotech1 14y ago
  Knowing who is involved, I think that is unfairly negative. When someone "games" a system to any major extent, the tracking data would expose that users "gaming" attempt.
  - dmor 14y ago
    If people can successfully "game" Referly we'd probably try to hire them.
    - mbesto 14y ago
      Sorry, I should have clarified. First, your site is brilliant in that it captures something that happens ALL THE TIME; people referring products to their friends. It's arguably the best way to push product in today's global web-based market. But there's an underlying problem; you've now are converting people's value of sharing into money. Once this catches on and gains real customer acquisition power, you know someone with a bigger wallet will be all over this trying to push their product. So, then at some point, my "friend" recommends a product/service, but I notice their getting a cut of the action. What are their real intentions? Is this something they genuinely are recommending? Additionally, since you take no cut of the affiliate payment, I'm trying to find out who you're actual customer is?
- jbigelow76 14y ago
  Refer.ly itself won't be able to be "gamed", they will only pay out a commission for a made sale, so there is no risk to them. Are you talking about someone "gaming" other user's links and replacing the original placer's tracking id with the gamer's? The Amazon problem could be harder to manage as they scale since they can't do subid tracking per user and probably try and correlate redirects to specific Amazon purchases, but that is going to leave a lot of grey area for any other purchases the user should be credited for but turns out to be too difficult to correlate.
larrys 14y ago
"What problem are they trying to solve?" I wouldn't say it's a problem. It's more of an opportunity. They make it easy (apparently) to create a set of links (that you possibly could do without them if you wanted to put in the effort but most people won't want to) to products and you get a cut if the product is purchased. The example which was "generators" I think might be done by an organization or a person, perhaps even as fund raising. I've already done the same with an amazon account with a general search box as well as when I have to purchase something from amazon etc. myself and you get back 4 to 6% depending on the product. (Amazon tracks this btw so you have to clear the cookies out.) If I wanted to recommend a product to a friend or a customer (and collect a commission) it takes more work to do it manually then (apparently I'm guessing) by using referly. Personally I think it's a nice idea. They are removing friction from the process. What remains to be seen is if enough people will be able to earn enough money to make it worth their while to use this ($100 or $25 per month is probably worth the trouble, $1.23 probably isn't).
scottkrager 14y ago
I see them as a competitor to Commission Junction, Linkshare, and ShareaSale. The big old affiliate networks with interfaces and customer service that make me gauge my eyes out. We're looking at using Refer.ly to handle our affiliate program because: #1. It's free for merchants right now (though I'm sure that will change) and #2. I like my eyes.
- dmor 14y ago
  Hey Scott thank you - email me danielle at refer.ly and I'll help you get things going
johns 14y ago
It's ok, it isn't meant for you. I also didn't get it, and I worked very closely with Danielle for a long time at Twilio. Then one day my sister-in-law who writes a blog about her hobby farm and Etsy business IMed me and asked "how do I make money from my blog?" She's tech savvy, but the idea of an affiliate network is outside her realm of understanding. I sent her to refer.ly and she instantly got it. That's the sweet spot. It's not me or you.
- _delirium 14y ago
  The big affiliate networks are also typically not friendly to small-time sites joining at all. I run a site with relatively low traffic, and most of my requests to join programs on Commission Junction or Google Affiliate Network get rejected, I'm guessing because I'm not big enough and/or don't have enough track record. Amazon is one exception where joining Amazon's affiliate program is probably no harder than joining refer.ly, though.
rdl 14y ago
I don't really care about the referral money, but would like to share specific products I love with other people. Tools to track how many people buy based on my rec is my main interest in refer.ly, although what I'd really like is a way to see which of my actual friends are buying what. IMO, Steam does this better than anyone. I wish there were Steam for real world products, including sharing post purchase use and satisfaction.
- jerryji 14y ago
  Bizspeaking.com is the platform designed to enable everybody share and promote great products, you can think of it as the Reddit for products. We are still pretty new but are rising fast. Please drop by and email your suggestions to info[at]bizspeaking.com
  - rdl 14y ago
    Interesting! I wish you had some way to do demo targeting on first use even before signup. When I first visit the site, I see a lot of stuff I'd pay to not have. (Kitschy junk...maybe due to Etsy partnership?). At the very least, I'd show 2-3 really diverse sets of items on the first page for non-logged-in non-cookied users. Maybe your market is basically 50-70 year old females right now, and so it's worth not making the initial set of items appealing to anyone else. I would hand-curate the front page rather than letting it be what appears to be driven by users, but keep it somewhat up to date with what's popular on the site. The first page view should be beautiful and compelling.
    - jerryji 14y ago
      Great suggestion. There is actually a list of filter keyword links right above the products. Those are the sample keywords that I want to prime my users, actually with "laptop" as the last keyword. Though I do know it's not obvious enough to most visitors. The dilemma is if I start to promote things that _you_ care about, my existing users will feel that I'm turning my back on them and quickly drop off. Geez, I wish I were Pinterest that only needs to serve 50-70 year old females forever :-P

by chinmoy 14y ago

slap_shot 14y ago

This. I constantly wonder this when I see these companies. Dan Siroker of Optimizely mentioned something interesting in a talk he gave at Rock Health. Before he founded Optimizely, he and his co-founders tried to reward people who could convert their Twitter followers in a similar fashion. He concluded that "we couldn't pay people enough to spam their friends." I worked for a startup that was essentially trying this same thing. It became clear, pretty quickly, that we also couldn't pay people enough to make them spam their friends with deals. Referly seems to be making a name for themselves, so I'm curious how they turn out.

dmor 14y ago
We're certainly not fans of spam. But a well timed recommendation of something I actually might want to buy, from person I know, at a time when I'm ready to make the purchase has a great chance of converting. You don't have to send tons of links (in fact that really doesn't work, people just unfriend you) - you need to send the right link at the right time. I've been obsessed with the concept of perfect information applied to the web since I worked on Whrrl several years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_information The reality is that there are huge existing businesses with names you recognize like Mary Kay and Tupperware who take advantage of the power of friends selling to friends, but with them you are limited to their inventory, you pay an upfront cost (buying samples and baseline inventory), and a lot of labor/time to make a sale. The goal with Referly is to broaden the products you refer, eliminate up front expenses, and reduce the amount of effort to generate a sale. This might not be for the HN audience, who can make $100/hour coding, but for a stay-at-home Mom who blogs and sells stuff on Etsy Referly is a great option for additional income. It's also great for anyone who has every written a blog post listing their top 10 book recommendations. As to why you should use us rather than your own Amazon tag - we get a better commission rate because we have economy of scale. And you can refer products from any of these websites http://refer.ly/merchants http://refer.ly/merchants
- bduerst 14y ago
  Perfect Information is a misnomer, because even when people have perfect information they cannot be expected to act rationally. Mary Kay and Tupperware tapped into the western womans' need to meet in person and converse with friends. Referly is trying to tap into the broadcasting phenomenon, or "bragging", that occurs over social networks, which in this instance translates to spam.
  - dmor 14y ago
    The information is perfect, not the person. It increases the expected value of an interaction, but doesn't guarantee it (free will and all that).
- tisme 14y ago
  > power of friends selling to friends That's one of the reasons I will never buy any product of theirs. You don't get to me through my friends. I consider abusing private friendships for commercial gain un-ethical.
- GrowthHacker 14y ago
  Speaking of using amazon, how are are you able to offer "cashback" or incentives through them, isn't that against the terms of Amazon's affiliate program?
  - dmor 14y ago
    biz dev, dear growth hacker.
bduerst 14y ago
>we couldn't pay people enough to spam their friends. This is exactly the flaw that I see with Referly. Not just with friends - you're diluting the quality of you communications when you become an advertiser, and in order to make it worth your time you're going to have to spam.

mbesto 14y ago

Agreed. I don't see any logical way how this can scale and can fend itself against being gamed. (note - that doesn't mean they can't make money. Looks like a pump-n-dump to me)

neurotech1 14y ago
Knowing who is involved, I think that is unfairly negative. When someone "games" a system to any major extent, the tracking data would expose that users "gaming" attempt.
- dmor 14y ago
  If people can successfully "game" Referly we'd probably try to hire them.
  - mbesto 14y ago
    Sorry, I should have clarified. First, your site is brilliant in that it captures something that happens ALL THE TIME; people referring products to their friends. It's arguably the best way to push product in today's global web-based market. But there's an underlying problem; you've now are converting people's value of sharing into money. Once this catches on and gains real customer acquisition power, you know someone with a bigger wallet will be all over this trying to push their product. So, then at some point, my "friend" recommends a product/service, but I notice their getting a cut of the action. What are their real intentions? Is this something they genuinely are recommending? Additionally, since you take no cut of the affiliate payment, I'm trying to find out who you're actual customer is?
jbigelow76 14y ago
Refer.ly itself won't be able to be "gamed", they will only pay out a commission for a made sale, so there is no risk to them. Are you talking about someone "gaming" other user's links and replacing the original placer's tracking id with the gamer's? The Amazon problem could be harder to manage as they scale since they can't do subid tracking per user and probably try and correlate redirects to specific Amazon purchases, but that is going to leave a lot of grey area for any other purchases the user should be credited for but turns out to be too difficult to correlate.

larrys 14y ago

"What problem are they trying to solve?" I wouldn't say it's a problem. It's more of an opportunity. They make it easy (apparently) to create a set of links (that you possibly could do without them if you wanted to put in the effort but most people won't want to) to products and you get a cut if the product is purchased. The example which was "generators" I think might be done by an organization or a person, perhaps even as fund raising. I've already done the same with an amazon account with a general search box as well as when I have to purchase something from amazon etc. myself and you get back 4 to 6% depending on the product. (Amazon tracks this btw so you have to clear the cookies out.) If I wanted to recommend a product to a friend or a customer (and collect a commission) it takes more work to do it manually then (apparently I'm guessing) by using referly. Personally I think it's a nice idea. They are removing friction from the process. What remains to be seen is if enough people will be able to earn enough money to make it worth their while to use this ($100 or $25 per month is probably worth the trouble, $1.23 probably isn't).

scottkrager 14y ago

I see them as a competitor to Commission Junction, Linkshare, and ShareaSale. The big old affiliate networks with interfaces and customer service that make me gauge my eyes out. We're looking at using Refer.ly to handle our affiliate program because: #1. It's free for merchants right now (though I'm sure that will change) and #2. I like my eyes.

dmor 14y ago
Hey Scott thank you - email me danielle at refer.ly and I'll help you get things going

johns 14y ago

It's ok, it isn't meant for you. I also didn't get it, and I worked very closely with Danielle for a long time at Twilio. Then one day my sister-in-law who writes a blog about her hobby farm and Etsy business IMed me and asked "how do I make money from my blog?" She's tech savvy, but the idea of an affiliate network is outside her realm of understanding. I sent her to refer.ly and she instantly got it. That's the sweet spot. It's not me or you.

_delirium 14y ago
The big affiliate networks are also typically not friendly to small-time sites joining at all. I run a site with relatively low traffic, and most of my requests to join programs on Commission Junction or Google Affiliate Network get rejected, I'm guessing because I'm not big enough and/or don't have enough track record. Amazon is one exception where joining Amazon's affiliate program is probably no harder than joining refer.ly, though.

rdl 14y ago

I don't really care about the referral money, but would like to share specific products I love with other people. Tools to track how many people buy based on my rec is my main interest in refer.ly, although what I'd really like is a way to see which of my actual friends are buying what. IMO, Steam does this better than anyone. I wish there were Steam for real world products, including sharing post purchase use and satisfaction.

jerryji 14y ago
Bizspeaking.com is the platform designed to enable everybody share and promote great products, you can think of it as the Reddit for products. We are still pretty new but are rising fast. Please drop by and email your suggestions to info[at]bizspeaking.com
- rdl 14y ago
  Interesting! I wish you had some way to do demo targeting on first use even before signup. When I first visit the site, I see a lot of stuff I'd pay to not have. (Kitschy junk...maybe due to Etsy partnership?). At the very least, I'd show 2-3 really diverse sets of items on the first page for non-logged-in non-cookied users. Maybe your market is basically 50-70 year old females right now, and so it's worth not making the initial set of items appealing to anyone else. I would hand-curate the front page rather than letting it be what appears to be driven by users, but keep it somewhat up to date with what's popular on the site. The first page view should be beautiful and compelling.
  - jerryji 14y ago
    Great suggestion. There is actually a list of filter keyword links right above the products. Those are the sample keywords that I want to prime my users, actually with "laptop" as the last keyword. Though I do know it's not obvious enough to most visitors. The dilemma is if I start to promote things that _you_ care about, my existing users will feel that I'm turning my back on them and quickly drop off. Geez, I wish I were Pinterest that only needs to serve 50-70 year old females forever :-P