Ask HN: What are your thoughts on this idea?

[fezzl]

Hello everyone.

I have thought of an idea for the social commerce space. We propose to create a button, deployable on ecommerce product landing pages, which allows users to recommend a product to specific friend(s) (instead of the whole world) via Facebook and Twitter. The recommender, acting as a reasonably shrewd person, would hopefully direct qualified leads to the ecommerce website and drive targeted marketing. We would then charge the ecommerce website for clicks (CPC affiliate marketing), giving a cut of our revenue to the recommender if a sale indeed happened (CPA-based profit sharing).

What do you think?

[ismarc]

I read through this, and all I heard in my head was "Click Here to receive 10% off your next purchase" and then the repeated sound of old-school cash registers. I think the hardest part would be coming up with an adequate monetization strategy for the purchasing sites. It may be a long-shot, but you may be able to do something like, user submits a referral. Referral receives a potential discount, original user can now redeem the discount promised. Your company receives x% of the purchase by the user using the discount. The existence of your service basically garnered 2 extra sales for the site, but I think it would be difficult to charge based on just the usage of the service. I think it would be an easier sell if you only charged if the referral resulted in a purchase. That way it costs the company nothing to try and get the free sales. The problem is, the take rate may be completely out of balance for the loads. Either way, done right it sounds like it could benefit the seller, the buyer, the referral and you, which is usually a pretty good sign of something worth trying.

[Scott_MacGregor]

I think it "might" make you a LOT of money if you can find a good enough hook to market to the big retailers, and also find a way to give a desirable kickback of some sort to the recommender to spend time using it.

My thought is a big retailer like Amazon might say, just a "Friends Button"? What makes your service unique enough that for instance Amazon won’t just put in their own "Friends Button"? How will you convince a retailer like Amazon to use your "Friends Button" service? What is the benefit to Amazon to use you for this service vs. doing it in-house?

Still though, I think that if you have a good enough business proposition to offer the retailers, this service could make you a LOT of money.

[coderdude]

It's a good idea, however I think it's pretty much covered by the 'email a friend' type feature. Some e-commerce sites display that feature prominently on product pages. How would your service differ from that feature, even if you offered analytics?

[ABrandt → coderdude]

Seems like the real value is derived from the incentives system. I don't think I've ever used those common 'email a friend' links. There's two potential reasons for this:

1) I don't get any results. Not even confirmation if the person took me up on my recommendation. 2) I go to ecommerce sites to research and buy things for myself--for some reason I just don't think of others during this process.

That being said, I do believe you're on to something here. Distribute this among the long-tail of ecommerce stores and you have a high potential market on your hands.

[ismarc → ABrandt]

If the rate of cost to the ecommerce sites is right for the number of extra sales, it'd spread like wildfire (with the right sales calls). I think there's really two models here. Refer a product and refer a site. Refer a site would be a prime target for the long-tail, especially if you only charge them on a successful sale (not just a referral submitted). On the other hand, a system to implement refer a product would fit in well for the mid-sized sites. And if it gains any traction, the big sites are your exit strategy. Get acquired for the technology so they don't have to spend the money to develop it in house. I'd probably start with the refer the site, charge based on a percentage of an extra sale, then later integrate refer a product.

[malloreon]

In general I don't think people like the idea of their friends sharing links with them in the hope that they (the sharer) will profit from it.

[ABrandt → malloreon]

I could see the dropbox reciprocity tactic working here. The recommender may get a cut of revenue, but the recommended could be given a discount as well. This could turn companies off from the CPC model though.

[petervandijck]

It's a good idea. Like Facebook's like, but for ecommerce. Check out how Amazon creates special links for Twitter affiliate sharing, something like that, but for all commerce sites. I like it.

[nzjames]

Will this not lead to a lot of spam? Maybe not on the scale of automated botnets but still someone spamming their friend list everyday.