You may have heard of a new URL-shortening service on the block called Good.ly. It’s a product spun out Skimlinks, an affiliate links aggregator we’ve covered extensively before. The connection is that Good.ly is linked to affiliate schemes which then generate cash for charities.
If you use Good.ly to make a product recommendation on Twitter (it’s also at @good_ly) and people click on and then buy what you suggested, Good.ly gives 55% of any earned referral fees to one of its nominated charities. So far the Dogs Trust, Crisis and ChildVoice International are signed up, but about 100 others have applied. The other 45% is used to run the service and continue marketing it.
Yesterday Good.ly donated 100% of all profits to charity as part of the #CharityTuesday trend on Twitter, so it’s obviously possible. Perhaps they should consider reducing their percentage as the service gets traction?
Good.ly shortened links are run through Skimlinks, and turned into an affiliate link where possible. Skilmlinks has 8,000 retailers so there’s a fair chance they’ll have a suitable product.
They’re also trying to get onto Seesmic Desktop, and you can vote for them here.