Fancy becomes a Pinterest that pays its users

The Pinterest competitor is powering $10K a day in sales, wants users to get a cut of the sales

I hate to admit that the Internet can be a very dangerous place to spend your time. Online viruses, cyber-bullying and misinforming Wikipedia pages aside, there are just too many great things that are available for purchase and countless sites curating all of the things I want together.

Two such sites that I have to lock my wallet away before logging onto are Pinterest and Fancy. Both are image categorizing and sharing sites that have been known to increase the number of people purchasing the displayed items.

In an effort to create a more unique experience, however, Fancy changed a little bit today to allow companies a way to share revenue with those that post item pictures that go viral.

Each time a user shares, say, an image of certain brand of wristwatch, they will get a link with a unique referral code. If someone else spots this image and buys the watch through that link–via Twitter, Facebook or elsewhere – the user who shared the photo receives 2% of the value of the purchase 30 days later as credit in their Fancy account.

You mean to say I can make money just by posting pictures of things I like? Now that is motivation.

But Fancy posters better be spurring a lot of purchases or some seriously high-ticket items if users are only receiving 2%. Amazon‘s affiliate program begins at 4%, and is even higher for apparel and accessories categories. StyleOwner, a service that encourages users to create online fashion boutiques, offers a 10% cut of sales made on behalf of its partners, which include big retailers including Saks and Nordstrom.

Smaller, informal service like this have popped up for Twitter, with celebrities and those with the most clout reaping rewards either directly from brands or through services like Klout.

With 1 million members so far, Fancy grosses an average of $10,000 in sales each day, and with new iPhone and mobile apps, Fancy has been able to rake in $70,000 in sales per week, up from the May release that it was in the range of $50,000-per-week.

The site, with its Pinterest-style magazine quality, makes it really easy to discover and explore new item, especially in the realm of retail and apparel. It will be interesting if Pinterest considers this model or if it will become a common addition seen on the items pinned through the service. If these perks can get folded into Pinterest, where users are already motivate to pin, there could be a greater value for the company that is quickly climbing the ladder to the most trafficked and time-spent on a social discovery site.