Lemonade offers free customizable retail widgets based around the concept of an old fashion lemonade stand.
The South Norwalk, Connecticut based Lemonade’s offers products from various affiliates (including AT&T, Apple and Wal-Mart). Users sign up then decide what products they want to show in their widget, then paste the code onto their own webpage or blog. The service also supports MySpace and Facebook, so users can add widgets onto their profile pages as well. As with any affiliate program, users get a share of each sale, somewhere around 5-15% of the sale price.
Lemonade was founded in 2007 by former employers of Modem Media, and was named by Time as the Top Website of 2007.
Out of the box the widget isn’t super pretty (working demo top right) but as a UGC offering it has appeal. Setup is easy with users searching for items then using a drag and drop process to place items in their widget. Embedding options have a focus on social networks with general blogs being listed under Blogger (no idea why) but again, a straight forward process. The only remaining question: will people actually buy items listed in the widget? I couldn’t find the split or it mentioned, but it’s fairly safe to say that Lemonade stand is betting people will because taking a cut of the affiliate payment is their business model. Worth a look.
