Show HN: Turning a subreddit Into a store | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Turning a subreddit Into a store

refer.ly

48 pointsdmor22 comments

I'm trying a new idea on Referly to help unlock awesome recommendations inside of community sites and turn them into storefronts. What I'd really like is feedback on whether you'd be interested in Reddit doing this themselves? If you'd shop a store like this of the best curated stuff recommended by Redditors I will pitch the idea to them.

And before you kill me for the affiliate links, the commission for every purchase through this profile goes to Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Update: I wrote a more complete blog post on my thoughts for creating this: http://refer.ly/blog/turning-recommendations-from-the-reddit...

Are you "JakeGyllenhaal" on Reddit?

I wish

It's a fantastic idea, as there is so much valuable content in many of these massive reddit threads; very easy to filter and pull out good quotes.

I'm glad that you're donating the proceeds to the EFF! Cheers

Thats an interesting idea - I wonder if people would be more willing to accept Facebook's "social advertising" if the proceeds of their advertising went to the charity of their choice?

I don't mind being a supporter for something I like using, if the proceeds of that go to support a cause that I think makes the world better.

At least that idea seems more likely to get over the acceptability hump

---

Course then that would lead to all sorts of people coming up with charities just to milk the idea. And then having sales people-charities-company incompatibility.

What's great about Amazon referrals for charity is that it takes no effort to view their link, and you don't have to worry about the cookie, and your purchase doesn't change.

Having Reddit do it themselves may increase the authenticity of the recommendations. Also you might want to look into subreddits like Redditgifts. As noted before, there is a lot of valuable data hidden in those conversations.

Yeah, I am thinking we might be able to contribute something attractive and useful to the community. I just read up on their licensing and we'll see where it goes. http://www.reddit.com/help/licensing

For all I care Reddit can have all the money, or donate it to EFF like we're doing. I just want to show people the amazing stuff that is locked up in forums (and that Referly is a cool way to build/moderate/curate it)!

the refer.ly blog and all blog posts are set to "noindex, nofollow" via the robots meta tag?

effing wordpress settings... yes, fixing

Reddit is already my shopping recommendation engine. If I'm looking to buy something, I find the most relevant subreddit and either search for a past post or make a new post. A lot of subreddits will already have a list of the best related equipment. It totally makes sense to formalize it and make it a little easier to discover / use.

That formalized step (which seems inevitable) will then end up affecting the way those subreddits work and interact.

This doesn't improve a subreddits signal to noise ratio, if anything it adds another source of potential drama and comes way to close to what Facebook tried with their advertising attempts.

Great idea, but desperately needs to list prices. I would also consider how to best organize & present the products on the page.

Grabbing the relevant comment text might also be helpful (e.g. why was something recommended? what is it good for?).

Good point, I can add prices (doesn't pull them automatically yet)

Nope. I don't like this one bit. Who then gets the money? Reddit themselves? The people posting referral links? At that point, then the subreddit deteriorates and you are left with a bunch of spam consisting of competing affiliate advertisers trying to get their affiliate links visibility. I go to reddit for the variable content and subscribe to subreddits for information that isn't fueled by affiliate advertisers.

If reddit (admins) took this approach (not sure why/if they'd use referely though since they could roll their own platform or use a pre-existing affiliate network like Amazon), then that makes sense (and I could get behind that), but I'm doubtful, as it'd take a lot of time and resources to prevent gamification.

Source: I started and run a Top 30 subreddit and am constantly removing affiliate links from peoples' comments trying to sneakily earn money, although I do allow them when they put a disclaimer saying that they are posting an affiliate link.

First of all, right now the bulk of the money goes directly to the merchant and 7% commission goes to EFF.

Second, I am certainly not proposing that these go directly into the thread itself. What I think is interesting is if it were a separate store that curates the most highly rated that could be valuable. You'll see I did not include everything, only the highest rated or commented items where there seems to be consensus. I think it would still need hand curation.

I also think if it belonged to Reddit then only their affiliate links should be allowed in the store, not affiliate links of Reddit users.

I did something similar a while back. It's free wallpapers, but the goal was to build an app using Reddit as a backend. http://w-ll.org/2011/02/05/redwall/

Danielle, can a user's store/profile have a custom URL?

Yes, right now profiles can have custom URLs (change it in settings) but collections/store don't. Should we add that?

I think it would be useful. So basically a user's store would be at their own domain rather than the Referly URL.

Holy expensive cookware, Batman!

Yeah... it is expensive, the mindset behind the "buy it for life" subreddit is that these are things you will have for 20+ years so price isn't as much of an issue

Reply on news.ycombinator.com