San Francisco based GoodStorm will soon launch a new program called MeCommerce that will allow bloggers to insert product listings in a javascript and iframe box on their sites and keep 50% of the retail mark-up for themselves. Blog readers will be able to purchase books and CDs inside the box without leaving the blog page they are on. Blog publishers can populate their boxes by tag or with specific items of their selection. I think this is going to be big.
An image of the purchase stage of a MeCommerce block is available on right. I tried to post a demonstration, but could only get WordPress to display it in the sidebar and not in the post. To see a demo check out the MeCommerce site. The point is that each of those blue bars drops down when clicked to display all the fields you need to purchase. The initial display is made up of the front covers of selected books and CDs along with some explanation text. This purchase stage appears when an item is clicked.
MeCommerce is accepting requests for beta invitations, accounts will open on June 30th. I think this kind of revenue split and attractive functionality make a powerful combination.
GoodStorm currently offers a service that gives individuals and organizations an online store to sell custom designed, on-demand manufactured t-shirts. Users receive 70% of the markup from manufacturing costs.
The company was founded by August Capital’s Andy Rappaport. We first covered GoodStorm when it launched in December.
Wow I would absolutely not want something that ugly on my site, would anybody?
I really like this idea, and having worked at a company that is rolling out “widgetized” web content, this is a great natural progression. What worries me about this approach is that as people get used to this type of instant purchasing cycle, phishers will have a field day. I just hope the security models are enhanced (it’s way to easy to dupe the VeriSign check) to keep purchasing this way safer and unencumbered.
Mike, it’s not that ugly until you click on a product to purchase. It’s pretty benign initially.
I think I’ll stick to keeping my blog ad free. Atleast ad free with ads from other networks besides my own.
“Blog readers will be able to purchase books and CDs inside the box without leaving the blog page they are on.”
Doesn’t the Rightcart company ( http://www.rightcart.com ) have a patent on that?
I don’t know about the idea of the average person doing their shopping in a widget. It sounds like a novelty to me, something most people won’t trust doing.
The idea of selling things through your blog is already being done through Chitika.com and e-commerce sites like Amazon. While this is stream-lined shopping experience for the visitors, I think most individual content sites fair better when they offer shopping comparison rather then straight e-commerce.
Yeah, I was just about to suggest RightCart:
http://mashable...s-a-novel-idea/
Still, the GoodStorm widget is an interesting new spin on it.
I think its a good concept from a purely business point of view. I can see it being a good way to develop a permission marketing relationship with a potential customer: First they read your blog, then they get to trust you, then they take it one step further by buying a book that you’re recommending.
For bloggers who want to monetize their influence, I think the idea has legs. Its a great potential sales lead tool.
It is interesting from another point of view: AdSense type of CPC ads are not all that effective on blog content. But directly offering products for sale, with the reader knowing the blogger gets a cut, may make it more interesting.
Great idea. We will see if users are ready for it, but seems like it gives bloggers and others yet another choice in bringing in revenue. And here, you pick what you want to sell — and do not need to rely on a Google search.
Rightcart and GoodStorm can’t be compaired when it comes to paying the user. With right card, if someone buys a 1000$ macbook laptop the site owner makes a lousy 10$. 1% commish is laughable.
Thanks for the tip Jon. I just checked on Right Cart and they have a patent pending and since it took them 6 weeks to design the stuff, it obvious that they do not have a patent and from reading GoodStorm’s site, they’ve also applied for a patent although not clear when. Under US patent law, the rule is not first to file but first to invent.
That said, I have been trying to figure out a better way to make money than Google AdWords. So comparing the 2 systems, they are not at all the same. GoodStorm has a far more elegant in-line system for both product and transaction presention. The notion of completing a transaction without leaving is bogus and is not defensible.
In patents, the totality of the invention is as important as the individual claims but enough of the quick lessons on patent.
I like RightCart but I love the MeCommerce solution from a totality point of view. First the revenue split is awesome with GoodStorm… I’ve never heard of 50/50 splits. Second, the totality of the GoodStorm model is by far more elegant. Third, it seems that GoodStorm controls their inventory as evidenced by how they do apparel on the GoodStorm.com site. I noticed they give 70% of profits in apparel. Fourth, the way products are placed in the GoodStorm block is by far more elegant. And finally, I just like their tagline Capitalism Done Right.
I will try both of them but I will do GoodStorm first. At the end of the day, it’s good to try both.
More money for the blogger community is a good ting.
This is a great find and possibly the begining of a broader trend, of companies figureing out how to co-create profitable businesses with their “customers (obviously ebay is the ultimate co-creative business). In the end content and creativity will follow the money. If they make the process simple to embed products in your blog posts, the same way you would amazon assosciate links, why wouldn’t you take the 50% of the profit as opposed to the small % amazon offers? It’s kind of like the revver vs. youtube thing. Once the revenue gene is out of the bottle you’re going to hear a big sucking sound of content leaving youtube going to revver to split some advertising dollars. The mentos + diet coke folks made $15,000 from their viral videos, and now zefrank’s over there.
http://revver.c...m/user/zefrank/
http://blog.exp...ollow-the-money
Cheers,
This is pretty cool. If you can sell what you are discussing, and make money doing it, I’m not sure why taking money from Amazon et al is a bad thing. Someone is going to make money off of my (occasionally useful) insights – it might as well be me.
Hi, I’m a blogger, an artist, and I helped found GoodStorm. We actually introduced MeCommerce earlier this month to progressive bloggers attending the YearlyKos Convention, because we’re trying to empower responsible marketers and progressive entrepreneurs.
What folks there seemed to like about MeCommerce is that you can earn 50 per cent net profit from sales, which means you can better monetize your own personal expression. There are many bloggers who want to write full time; this will help enable them. That’s a great thing.
You actually CAN personalize the colors of the display when you install it, matching MeCommerce to the look and feel of your own blog or Website. And you can change the colors whenever you want.
You can control MeCommerce product selection through ‘tags,’ and change them as needed. You can also find specific products if you want to recommend a specific book, CD, or DVD.
And there is a huge product offering built into the platform; MeCommerce delivers content from a catalog of millions of books and hundreds of thousands of DVDs and CDs.
What I like about it, personally, is visitors can engage in an e-commerce experience without leaving your Website. That works for me. I’ve got MeCommerce running on my own sketchbook blog: http://sketchbo....dangermarc.com — if you want to check it out.
Give me a holler if you have questions at marc@goodstorm.com. If you want to be on the beta team, we’ve got a long list, but I’ll be happy to add
This sounds like its going to be amazing. I would love to have this on my site, get paid to do what I do all day .. not bad. I’m kind of new to the whole blogging scene, but so far I have seen some really neat things to do with your blogs.
I can’t wait to try this out. Hooray for gadgets and technology. This looks to be far more promising then anything I ahve had on there thus far.
How does your 50% compare to amazon’s 4-7% in real dollars?
Say, I sell a copy of “Agile Web Development with Rails.”
Thanks
Cool site
Who will buy?
marc, im playing around with it on your site and i notice that i cannot go back to the product listings after i choose to get more info on one. and for some reason it refreshes the page and if the content is bigger than the given space, there are ui issues. other than these usablity issues which can be easily addressed, id say this could be a hit.
not a big fan of the idea. barns and noble had banners like that in 1999. i know cause it was my job to make sure they worked on the publishers website. they were not as fancy, but i don’t think people will want to buy stuff via a script or iframe or whatever from a different company/domain than the site they are on. just my 2 cents.
50% of the markup is probably around 10% of the price… still better than 7% but not as extreme as suggested in some of the comments above.
What bugs me more is their claim on their about page:
“GoodStorm is an economic change agent that is empowering socially progressive organizations to generate higher income from e-commerce sales and use the increased profit to support their causes through profitable, sustainable online stores.”
Sorry guys, but i really have to puke here…. and i have no clue how this lofty sounding vision is applicable to this new product. Goodstorm, if you’re reading this, please clarify.
Jack and all,
Thanks so much for all your comments. Our vision is lofty ~ It is: Capitalism Done Right. When we started GoodStorm, we knew we would never satisfy everyone. It was never our intention.
We at GoodStorm, our team as well as our investors, take home less of a cut, so you and all of the good people who sell through our services can take home more of their own profit. We know that organizations need money to do their good work. Everything costs money – phone calls, leaflets, office space, voter registration drives. Families who are laid off need money to put food on the table. Student aid and loans have been cut. We want to make a difference by allowing our partner organizations and individuals to earn needed income, while they stay focused on their respective missions serving others, affect social change or simply eat.
We’re bringing the message through our methods, and we decided to use our technologies and our capital for that reason. We want to create a platform that isn’t just for us, but something we can share and give back.
We think that there is more long-term value in collaboration and we want to work together to create something bigger than the sum of our parts.
We first released apparel in January 06. We have been fortunate because we were given the chance to help organizations make meaningful margins. For example, a peace group raised over $20,000.00 using our technologies and manufacturing and shipping capacity.
In our apparel business, we are also building a network of good people to collaborate with each other on designs. The kind of folks we’ve been talking too are all excited to help with cool design ideas for our partners’ logos, shirts, and stores. This means our partners get the added benefit of access to designers whose values are in line with theirs. These are GoodStorm’s kind of folks.
So we have apparel, books, CDs, DVDs, games and in the next few months, many many more product categories and SKUs as we ramp up pick, pack and ship capacity. In most cases, we cannot beat the Amazons and Walmarts of the world however there are products where we can beat their prices.
So taking a singular book and judging our intent and business model may be a short tail view.
There are some projections that the blog space will reach 400 million worldwide. We want to empower that entire market with our products and technology. Can we do all? By no means is it even possible. Can we help build product serving blocks for a few of the 400 million, we think so.
A few of you compare us to Amazon. We do not intend to compete with Amazon. In the real world analog, bloggers would be like the small hardware store owner who joined the Ace Hardware cooperative. Ace Hardware store owners know they cannot compete with Home Depot. But they lack in price competitiveness, they make up in service. Our blog owners are the corner coffee shop whose latte is a little more expensive but gives free internet access. We are not StarBucks.
If a tech blogger who specializes in Ruby On Rails maintains a site for that community and needs a few dollars to help with server , ISP costs or tuition, would you buy a RoR book from him for more than Amazon will sell. Maybe yes or maybe no. The fact is value shoppers are not our customers. If you want the cheapest book, we encourage you to go elsewhere.
Our customer is the person who would be willing to pay more knowing that a big part of the proceeds go to the blogger, organization or individual they support. Perhaps to support the blogger who taught him a little Ruby On Rails. Our business model is founded on values and we believe there are people who share them.
I do not know anyone who has asked for a discount when they buy Girl Scout cookies. I know no one who goes to the American Cancer Society and asks for a discount on a promotional item or book. Even in the real world, I have never heard of anyone asking for discounts from the Tupperware lady or the Scholastic book fair held in the school to raise money for the library. Finally it does not always have to be altruistic. Some people just need to make money for fun. That’s ok too.
So to those of you who are offended by our model, we apologize. There have been over 150 beta sign-ups since 10am today and we think we’ll get more. We hope we can meet their expectations. We think we’ll grow big and as volume increases, we’ll give even more profits away.
Today was a great day for us. We found a great article in Wired about the homeless and the internet. We will be launching an apparel store for one of the homeless persons profiled on GoodStorm.com so stay tuned on Monday. She may even open a MeCommerce product serving block on her blog. We ask you to buy a shirt, a book or 2 from her store. BTW, no discounts.
Good day to you all,
Yobie Benjamin
yobie {at} goodstorm com
Founder and CEO
Visit goodstorm.com or my blog at: mygoodstorm.blogspot.com
Guess who Google is going to buy next. Seems like a natural next step to strengthen Google’s cost-per-action program. http://www.wire...ml?tw=rss.index
On second thought Microsoft might just steal the idea although it would dirt low of the internet big boys to do so considering the “lofty” aims of this company.
I’ll give it a shot and play around with it. Maybe its something that will work on my sites and its users.
I think this will be a flash in the pan or, at best, some small widget used by a handful of people.
Yes, it’s great if a blogger is talking about a book which is these days an impulse buy online. most other products are not. Let’s also remember that that people who put widgets on their webpages and people who read blogs are still a small tech-biased, geeky minority.
Yub.com tried this years ago with minimal success. The only different between this and yub is that yub is confined to a website whereas this widget is more distributed.
I know it’s secure, you know it’s secure, but for the average joe is going to be looking for the lock on their browser before they type their cc info in there.
It could be a good tool for introducing a product, initiating a sell, but it needs a website to reinforce it and close the sale. Even a “click here to complete order at MeCommerce” option would be a decent start…
Gosh it’s National Widget Story Day at TechCrunch!
Since most Bloggers will never achieve the Traffic required to produce enuf clickthroughs to generate any real $Coin i think this is a welcome addition to their earnings arsenal. It will prolly take a combination of AdWidgets & maybe something that hasn’t even been thought of or dreamed up or come out of STEALTH yet*
Bravo GoodStorm!!
“patent pending” — what a joke!!!
They can’t be serious to apply for a patent for something that simple and I KNOW that it is definitively not “prior art”. There are a few ecommerce solutions available in both Europe and the US which support so called “affiliate shops” / “white label shops” for their affiliates. People can also buy there without leaving the website of the affiliate.
Maybe the patent authority in the US is stupid enough to give a patent to something like this but at least in Europe we do not have software patents and even with them simple solutions would not be allowed.
Greets, Taylor
Snap, Emehrkay, Jack, others,
We’re about to launch this product with our Beta users, so we welcome all of your feedback from UI tweaks, to financial clarification.
Please feel free to email me directly: marc (at) goodstorm (dot) com, and I’ll make sure your voice is heard.
Thanks for all your suggestions so far!
So let’s see the beta.
GoodStorm’s MeCommerce API sets have been released:
http://mecommer...orm.com/api/v1/
I read about the MeCommerce widget here on Techcrunch, and I decided to write a little review after playing around with the beta. You can read it here:
http://www.koud...commerce-review
it’s active for italian support?
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