Chris Sukornyk, ongoing…

TweetBucks - Make money on every shortened link

My new startup, Chango, just launched our first product called TweetBucks.com

Anyone who uses Twitter, probably already leverages URL shortening tools like bit.ly and tinurl.com (who’s url isn’t even that tiny). The whole point is to shrink your links so you can fit more content into your 140 character limit.

TweetBucks layers on top of these shortening services by integrating two money makers. First, we automatically scan any URL you shorten. If you link to any number of thousands of merchants we automatically include an affiliate code. Now if someone clicks your link and makes a purchase you are compensated with a commission of anywhere from 5%-50% depending upon the merchant and product. Second, we allow you to insert an ad-frame around the destination site (like this one: bit.ly/91GSB). You can earn money each time your link is clicked (anywhere from $0.5–>$1 eCPM). Let me know what you think (@sukornyk & @tweet_bucks).

Signup is Free - and we deposit $5 into your account just for signing up!

Startups fill the gap

It sometimes amazes me how startups form, seemingly out of thin air, to fill unoccupied niches.  Twitterimage.com is a perfect example; it is a new graphic design business that specializes in creating custom Twitter backgrounds.   Only a few months ago, this would not have been a viable business.  Yet as more and more people hack their Twitter backgrounds, an opportunity bubbled up and a new startup was born to fill the gap.   They also seem to have a pretty clear focus and strategy to get noticed (free backgrounds to people with 5,000) followers.  My Twitter background needs some love, but I’m no where near 5K followers!

Youtube Video Annotations

YouTube recently launched a feature that allows you to embed clickable regions within a video.   Unfortunately you are prevented from linking out to external sites and can only link to other Youtube videos or search results.  So while the feature might lead to interesting pick-your-plot vidoes it isn’t going to change the world.

The ability to link-out would be a huge benefit for affiliate marketers looking to drive traffic to their campaigns.  If external links were allowed you could imagine a great deal of effort would be used to produce viral videos that ultimately are used to sell a product (the soap opera model). Until then, the only way to add links are to use services like LinkedTube which lets you add links to YouTube videos embedded on your site.

Checkout this demo: