But why is there even a fee? I mean... there's how many affiliate links that embedly will be picking up as a result and writing as their own... they're earning from your using it... they should be paying you for giving them so much revenue.
Have you ever tried to make money on affilate links? In all honesty we make next to nothing from affiliating Amazon links. It's not even close to a viable business, we only do it because we don't like leaving money on the table.
I make about £3k per month off a site that I set up for my own amusement and time-wasting. 6 million page views per month, I'm only signed up to 4 affiliate schemes. Amazon pay the worst of all of them, that's true.
It's a side project, but for something that I only do out of love £3k per month is quite tidy.
Edit: I guess what I'm saying is that you could take skimlinks and knock them for six, and people would have a real benefit and reason to use embedly whereas skimlinks milk far too much and it's not even got a user benefit.
PS: Are you hiring remote workers? I know how to make this work ;)
Interesting, I guess we are doing it wrong. I see what you are saying about skimlinks, we have received this advice in the past. It's just not something we are looking into now.
We might be up for a commission based remote worker. :)
Hit me on email and I'll tell you more detail: david @ buro9.com
There are a couple of specifics to get right, mostly it's about giving a reason for webmasters to use it and what is massively under-estimated is that a lot of webmasters hang out places just like this and are asking for solutions to both embedding stuff and earning money.
