I don't really care about the referral money, but would like to share specific products I love with other people. Tools to track how many people buy based on my rec is my main interest in refer.ly, although what I'd really like is a way to see which of my actual friends are buying what.
IMO, Steam does this better than anyone. I wish there were Steam for real world products, including sharing post purchase use and satisfaction.
I wish you had some way to do demo targeting on first use even before signup. When I first visit the site, I see a lot of stuff I'd pay to not have. (Kitschy junk...maybe due to Etsy partnership?).
At the very least, I'd show 2-3 really diverse sets of items on the first page for non-logged-in non-cookied users. Maybe your market is basically 50-70 year old females right now, and so it's worth not making the initial set of items appealing to anyone else. I would hand-curate the front page rather than letting it be what appears to be driven by users, but keep it somewhat up to date with what's popular on the site. The first page view should be beautiful and compelling.
There is actually a list of filter keyword links right above the products. Those are the sample keywords that I want to prime my users, actually with "laptop" as the last keyword. Though I do know it's not obvious enough to most visitors.
The dilemma is if I start to promote things that _you_ care about, my existing users will feel that I'm turning my back on them and quickly drop off.
Geez, I wish I were Pinterest that only needs to serve 50-70 year old females forever :-P
IMO, Steam does this better than anyone. I wish there were Steam for real world products, including sharing post purchase use and satisfaction.