Wishnut.com promotes competitive thoughtfulness

I work in an industry with a deservedly poor reputation: affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketers are paid to drive web traffic to ecommerce sites. In fact, we clog the web with sites designed to manipulate people, and clog inboxes with torrents of spam.

I didn’t appreciate how mindless and heartless commerce could be until I was dropped in to the middle of the most mindlessly heartless segment of it. I wish that I could do my work with some purpose beyond convincing people that they need what they don’t.

This desire has driven some friends and I to create Wishnut.com.

There, users can post gift ideas for others, and Wishnut will buy and send the gifts that receive the most votes from other users. Whenever someone posts a gift idea, they must describe the meaning behind the gift and provide a link to the ecommerce site where the gift can be purchased.

Such links are automatically turned into affiliate links, so if surfers click through the links and make purchases, Wishnut will earn commissions. We hope those commissions will cover the costs of the gifts we give away, but we don’t know if it will work; the site is still very much in development.

Nonetheless, I’m excited about Wishnut for 2 reasons: If it works, it will prompt users to think more about making others happy. The winners will be those people who post the most thoughtful gift ideas. Also, most of the links will be provided by users who have no commercial interest in posting them, thus avoiding the kind of conflict of interest that plagues my industry.

Have I saved my soul? No, but I’m getting closer. If the site works, my boss will let me start other, more ambitious civically-minded projects. I hope, I hope.

Nick Bentley