Show HN: shrtn.co - a revenue generating affiliate tool for the masses | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: shrtn.co - a revenue generating affiliate tool for the masses

11 pointsprocessing12 comments

We have just finished the beta release of shrtn.co, and are excited to get HN's feedback on our new tool.

shrtn allows you to monetize your links seamlessly in an unobtrusive manner by adding affiliate codes to the merchants that we support. Whenever a sale is made via your URL, we share most of the revenue generated with the you. shrtn is currently connected with around 50 merchants, but that number is increasing daily.

The application is pretty lean at the moment. We have a few ideas for future developments which includes a more advanced bookmarklet, a browser plugin to inform you of affiliate link opportunities, advanced analytics & a sexier JS/ajax interface.

Please try us out - we would love to get your feedback on this HN!

View on HN

Great idea. Congrats on the release!

A couple of suggestions:

- An API to generate shortened URLs automatically would be great.

- Some mechanism for supporting custom domain names.

Say, someone has a link shortener service with a decent amount of traffic. Both shrtn.co and the shortener owner would benefit greatly from an API/custom domain combo.

There is currently a very basic api in place @ http://shrtn.co/api/*your-url*

Custom domain names are a great idea. Thanks for the feedback!

Awesome!

Is it possible to authenticate using my shrtn username? The current API generates links using shrtn's own affiliate codes.

We're currently working on a REST based API with authentication. Release should be in within the next two weeks.

What's the amount of work involved in adding merchants? I notice the list grew a lot since last time, should we expect 20/month?

Oh, and there's no chance you've solved my personal bugaboo, and can redirect to Amazon.COM/CA/UK depending on a person's origin, is there?

At the moment most of the merchants are added via CPA networks, so the dev time is fairly minimal. I expect this will change when we exhaust all of the top merchants on the affiliate networks and go looking for more 'premium' merchants.

There's no location detection just yet, but it does work with .com/ca/co.uk, you just have to put the relevant URL in the first place.

1) How are you different/better than VigLink, which also provides this service?

2) Do you have permission from affiliates to act as a master account like this? (I'd be concerned they'll cut you off and me with you)

3) What percentage are you taking?

Love the idea!

I think you should have some mention of how are revenues shared be it at 10-90 or 90-10. That was the first thing I went looking after.

We made a concious decision to keep the revenue share margins under wraps, but rest assured it is - and always will be - in the users favour.

I don't entirely understand why people are preferring to keep this kind of number under the desk. Would you share why?

In my mind, specific number/statistic is a layer of trust.

So it's 51-49 then.

Clickable URL http://shrtn.co

Reply on news.ycombinator.com