I spent 5 minutes trying to figure out how it works without signing up and gave up. The site is very skimpy on details. What are the typical commission rates? How do the commissions compare to Amazon affiliate rates? What is the advantage of using this service vs. existing affiliate programs? Feels like you are trying to appeal to the naive by just saying "magically get paid by talking about products"
Refer.ly (YC S12) Lets Regular Folks Earn Affiliate Revenue
11–20 of 63 posts
Re: Refer.ly (YC S12) Lets Regular Folks Earn Affiliate Revenue
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry to disappoint you. For teh sake of getting this out the door and in the hands of users we haven't built our a directory page yet but its in the works - we move fast. You can also request a specific product/reward here (not yet publicly linked on the site) http://refer.ly/business.php But if you still want to delete your account just email support@refer.ly and we'll take care of that right away
I think the issue is more that without a directory your product is useless. How can I see when I'm going to get a reward if you don't tell me? I've signed up like the person you replied to and I've shortened 2 links, but there's no indication if I'm going to get a reward and if that's the case what incentive is there for me to use the link? At the very least can there be a tick or cross next to the links to confirm w…
Providing a check mark or some kind of validation as to whether or not a link is covered for rewards is a great idea, I've added that to the list of potential features.
I understand the cynicism - the entire affiliate world is pretty shady, which is why I'm so determined to disrupt it. We are using 3rd party services to help us get reach across top merchants online. Sounds like this part of the service needs more attention earlier than we thought - thank you.
Re: Refer.ly (YC S12) Lets Regular Folks Earn Affiliate Revenue
#13Judging by its appearance, I'm guessing this won't have any business options? Would be nice to have a centralized product like this that saves me from having to find/sign up for each individual affiliate program. Plus having all the analytics data in one place, too. Right now it seems to be super early stage. No database of affiliate programs that they have and you can't even withdraw rewards (earnings).
> Would be nice to have a centralized product like this that saves me from having to find/sign up for each individual affiliate program
Re: Refer.ly (YC S12) Lets Regular Folks Earn Affiliate Revenue
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry to disappoint you. For teh sake of getting this out the door and in the hands of users we haven't built our a directory page yet but its in the works - we move fast. You can also request a specific product/reward here (not yet publicly linked on the site) http://refer.ly/business.php But if you still want to delete your account just email support@refer.ly and we'll take care of that right away
I think the issue is more that without a directory your product is useless. How can I see when I'm going to get a reward if you don't tell me? I've signed up like the person you replied to and I've shortened 2 links, but there's no indication if I'm going to get a reward and if that's the case what incentive is there for me to use the link? At the very least can there be a tick or cross next to the links to confirm w…
Hi, Referly's designer here. Yeah, those big huge brands really do have affiliate programs set up that we integrate with and it's an interesting design challenge you brought up, some way to indicate that a site's a recognized vendor in our program before you decide whether to share the link.
This is where I think it helps to throw an app out into the wild and see what sticks, because our idea was more that you could use it as a link shortener in general and that some portion of them would earn money. That wouldn't be the primary reason to share (it'd be to track your influence and show clickthrough rates) but it'd be a nice-to-have bonus if it did, right?
Re: Refer.ly (YC S12) Lets Regular Folks Earn Affiliate Revenue
#15Cool idea but a couple of concerns:
1. With a sub-affiliate model, affiliate scammers will be all over this (especially if there is no real vetting process). These are the type of links that Twitter spammers would love to pump out in the wild.
2. Would any of this traffic be incremental for a merchant? For example, if my buddy asks me what TV to buy wouldn't I tell him my true opinion regardless of the payout I received?
3. Right now it looks like they're using Viglink (http://www.viglink.com) for affiliatizing (at least for eBay). I would seriously wonder how willing merchants would be to get onboard directly.
I'm excited for innovation in the affiliate space (which is sorely needs), but this is a really tough problem. Fraud and incrementality are two things that need to be addressed before a merchant would be willing to sign up (esp. if they don't have much budget free to work with).
Re: Refer.ly (YC S12) Lets Regular Folks Earn Affiliate Revenue
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry to disappoint you. For teh sake of getting this out the door and in the hands of users we haven't built our a directory page yet but its in the works - we move fast. You can also request a specific product/reward here (not yet publicly linked on the site) http://refer.ly/business.php But if you still want to delete your account just email support@refer.ly and we'll take care of that right away
I think the issue is more that without a directory your product is useless. How can I see when I'm going to get a reward if you don't tell me? I've signed up like the person you replied to and I've shortened 2 links, but there's no indication if I'm going to get a reward and if that's the case what incentive is there for me to use the link? At the very least can there be a tick or cross next to the links to confirm w…
> although how you had the time to sign up thousands of retailers and no time to build the product into a usable state confuses me
They don't need to "sign up retailers", just join their existing affiliate programs. Affiliate networks like Commission Junction get them 1500 merchants and 62% of the top 500 retailers just by clicking some buttons. I'm sure you could establish relationships with the top affiliate programs fairly quickly while personally contacting very few of them. Now skim off some of the commission while paying the rest to your users as rewards, and you have a business.
Re: Refer.ly (YC S12) Lets Regular Folks Earn Affiliate Revenue
#17Judging by its appearance, I'm guessing this won't have any business options? Would be nice to have a centralized product like this that saves me from having to find/sign up for each individual affiliate program. Plus having all the analytics data in one place, too. Right now it seems to be super early stage. No database of affiliate programs that they have and you can't even withdraw rewards (earnings).
I'd love to learn more about the business options you are looking for (danielle@refer.ly is my email). We're using a bunch of servies on the backend to get the maximum affiliate coverage we can, and from your comment and others here it sounds like that's pretty high priority.
We're tracking earnings right now, and we tried to guess how long it would take before the first person earns $10 -- and we think it might be a few days to a week, so by the time they're ready to claim their $ we will have the UI for that... or we can reimburse them manually.
Re: Refer.ly (YC S12) Lets Regular Folks Earn Affiliate Revenue
#18Judging by its appearance, I'm guessing this won't have any business options? Would be nice to have a centralized product like this that saves me from having to find/sign up for each individual affiliate program. Plus having all the analytics data in one place, too. Right now it seems to be super early stage. No database of affiliate programs that they have and you can't even withdraw rewards (earnings).
> Would be nice to have a centralized product like this that saves me from having to find/sign up for each individual affiliate program http://skimlinks.com/ http://www.viglink.com/ http://www.123linkit.com/
This is super helpful. Thanks!
Re: Refer.ly (YC S12) Lets Regular Folks Earn Affiliate Revenue
#19I've spent a lot of time working with affiliate marketers over the past decade and I wonder how Refer.ly is going to handle compliance with the new FTC rules around compensation disclosure. Effectively if you're promoting a product in exchange for compensation, that relationship must be disclosed at the genesis of the click and according to the FTC no compensation is too small to be in violation w/out disclosure. htt…
Forget refer.ly, how is Amazon going to cope with this in general?
Isn't it the blogger/affiliate's obligation to disclose possible compensation, not the retailer?
Re: Refer.ly (YC S12) Lets Regular Folks Earn Affiliate Revenue
#20I'd focus more on the analytics than the affiliate revenues. Most bloggers I've spoken with on the topic say the visibility/analytics they have on their affiliate revenues is poor. Most affiliate programs will give you click data but beyond that you really have no idea what's being bought, what's driving your affiliate revenues, or the value of your visitors.
I had a blogger friend recently pitch a project to a luxury brand and one of the first things the brand asked for was ROI and purchase data on the blog. She could piecemeal some of it but it's a challenge.
On the flip side, advertisers/brands are asking for more ROI and conversion data to identify who is actually driving sales.