Capitalism Done Right. Nice Mantra

Came across a new contextual advertising platform that launched this week called meCommerce which I think is rather innovative (and very clever to boot) new way to make money from your blog or website. Its the brainchild of GoodStorm.com, a company founded to aid nonprofit fundraising efforts who have the mantra “Capitalism Done Right”. Bloggers can single out products they recommend and a simple insertion of MeCommerce code will populate the page with product listings. The site gives bloggers 50% of the profit and they claim to be able to deliver virtually any book, DVD, or CD.

Its kind of like a cross between Google Adsense and Chikita MiniMalls however the real difference lies in the fact that the visitor is never taken away from your blog whilst actually making the purchase. The entire transaction is completed within the ad block on your blog. I think this is really moving the contextual advertising model forward one step further and I expect a lot of major companies (Google included) will be sitting up and taking note of this. It wouldn’t surprise me if those busy bods over at Google are already beavering away on a similar concept.

I think the only real things that are bothering me about the meCommerce business model is how competitive their prices will be compared to say Amazon when they are offering a large 50/50 split on the profit. Potential customers will shop around on the internet so the prices will need to be competitive. Also whilst they claim you can run this in conjunction with other contextual programmes like Google Adsense and YPN, I’d be a bit wary of risking this until I have further confirmation from Google and Yahoo.

Expect lots of copycat websites offering similar products in the near future.