Clip, Blog, Analyze, Make Money: Curate.Us Says Every Day is Black Friday
It is the official start of the gift-giving panic attacks.
It is the day we shop for things that we really hope don’t suck.
It is also when retailers either take wheelbarrows of money to the bank, or their insides explode from stress ulcers because revenues are down, thus signifying the end of ChristmaHaunaKwanzaa and the world forever.
For online affiliates, like bloggers who use Amazon Associates, it can also be a day of disappointment and stress - or quick and easy profit.
One very enterprising startup has come up with a unique teaser that engages users with the seductive offer of making affiliate profits easier to come by. Content sharing clip site Curate.Us made sweet sweet love to affiliate eyes when they blogged that as of this week, Black Friday is now every day of the year.
Let me start by explaining what Curate.Us is, and you will see a rare moment of me singing sweet glittery rainbow butterfly praise for a startup. This is worth the price of admission alone, which to you is the cost of free, so sit tight and enjoy the precious moment. Soak it up. It will not last.
Curate.Us (formerly Clip.ly) is really neat: it's a free clipping service where anyone (an account is not needed) can make a screencap or text quote clip that embeds into a blog post. It hosts the image and does all the work for formatting and linking, in addition to providing a customizable interface where users can resize, reformat and customize the clip.
Visit a site, make a clip (there's a bookmarklet for Firefox, Safari and Chrome, with an accelerator for Explorer), and done. Once a clip is made, one click allows sharing on Twitter, Facebook and a few others - for those who visit Curate.Us while logged in.
Then Curate.Us gets down and nerdy, and keeps a history of the site's clips form other people (thus recording website changes; clips are never deleted), and offers open access to analytics on clips.
It's a one-stop shop, sort of like a web curator's Tumblr - but for your own blog, with source linking built in. There is a WordPress plugin. Everything is automatic, including keeping content within copyright laws - and if a user pulls over 100 words into a quote, they get a gentle reminder about Fair Use.
But what in the stuck-in-the-chimney hell is this Black Friday business about?
Curate.Us is new and hiring devs, but the little elves currently in the shop made it so users can clip a product page, add their own affiliate code (such as Amazon, Think Geek, or any Commission Junction affiliate), post the clip and own the commissions. A shortlink is also generated. When someone clicks "Share the Link" they also copy over your affiliate code.
For those who warm themselves with seriously spiked eggnog, data analytics, conversion point information - and affiliate sales made easier - this is a toasty tool.
Talk back in the comments and tell me what you think: will you use Curate.Us for generating affiliate revenue? Or just let us know what to put in the eggnog this year here at the Tech Broiler: readers, we depend on you.