Consumers get paid for promoting products they love

Consumers frustrated by products with problems already have RedesignMe to share—and get paid for—their ideas on improving them. Now, on the flip side of the coin, there’s Hollrr, a site that lets users help promote the products they love. Currently in invitation-only beta, Seattle-based Hollrr aims to help small companies launch new products. Toward that end, it enables consumers to help spread the word about the ones they think deserve to succeed—even rewarding them for recruiting new customers. Fans of a particular product begin by joining its Tribe of Followers, as they’re known on the site. If there isn’t one yet for that product, they can be the first to suggest it for consideration; Hollrr’s team will then talk to the product’s owner to see if it’s interested in participating. Either way, once there’s a Tribe, fans can help promote the product by writing an endorsement, downloading a widget to their blog or Facebook page and sending a link to their friends via Twitter or email. Through Hollrr’s partnerships with the companies behind the products, rewards are distributed to Tribe members in two ways. In cases where the maker’s reward system allows Hollrr to track individual users, participants get directly rewarded for each person who clicks through from their endorsement to the product website; otherwise, rewards are split among the whole Tribe, with the greatest shares going to those who joined earliest. (When direct rewards are possible, Hollrr still contributes a separate Tribe reward among the group as well.) Each user is allowed a maximum of five products to promote, and payments are made through an Amazon Flexible Payment account. Using technology that’s easily integrated with vendors’ existing affiliate programs, Hollrr is another lovely illustration of the fertile ground where Generation C(ontent) and Generation C(ash) meet. The crowds love to contribute, but only by rewarding them will you unleash their full potential. Currently, Hollrr rewards are available only to US-based consumers; one to adapt on a localized or niche basis? (For much more on consumers making money instead of just spending it, check out our sister-site trendwatching.com’s briefing on sellsumers.)