FAQ

  1. What is so great about this site?

    We've pulled together thousands of stores to feature thousands of cool and amazing "crowd certified" niche products. It's a speedy shopping experience in a virtual big box environment. Ultimately, we have the coolest stuff because of people power.

    Shopping should be fun and fruitful. Sometimes shopping requires too much thinking so we try to remove the heavy mental lifting.

    On a scale of 1-7, each product must be a 6 or 7. Much more than adequate or textbook, the network seeks Very Strong, Best of Class, and WOW discoveries daily.

  2. How is the site organized?

    Cool Products ambitiously features 28 categories and 700 sub-categories of hobbies, interests, occupations and personal styles. No CDs, DVDs, Books or apparel. We feel those categories are well represented elsewhere. We are an evolving social network of real people, building and sharing and linking products for every imaginable category, from every imaginable vendor. Products are unusually excellent in their categories. No distracting advertising, dancing cartoons or spyware; just amazing products located by product finders - with a purpose. By aggregating so many merchants into so many categories we facilitate a rich serendipitous experience for busy people.

  3. What is the best way to shop and find products on CoolProducts.com?

    Shop by category! The coolest stuff is organized by categories of interest. Just use the category navigation located on the left side and pick your favorite category. If you use the search box to find specific products you will not experience the amazing depth of products from the long tail of the web that our community has made available to you. If you are disappointed with what you find, help us out and make some suggestions.

  4. What is all this Community & Participate stuff about?

    1. It is a social network for product finders incentivized with rewards and community ownership.
    2. We aggregate 1000s of merchants and their top products into one store and...
    3. We are working together to create a better product recommending tool.

    What helps this community most is people offering a little time and going shopping "outside" of CoolProducts.com... then sharing those great product ideas for rewards. Next we ask willing participants to go shopping "inside" CoolProducts.com... to offer opinions on the products currently listed. User generated comments on products are sometimes the most useful information for a shopper, even more than canned product descriptions.

    Once a product is suggested, our community has to approve it or it is removed. Over time, the most interesting products move to the top and the least interesting move down in their category until they are removed. This is a system of unending augmentation. The catalog doesn't just grow from harmonious thought but also from constant scrutiny and amending.

  5. What is the reward part?

    When a new product or merchant is found we endeavor to form a commissionable relationship. As sales are made, the original idea contributor gets a share of our commission. In other words, contributors will be paid $10 per product idea shared (over time as commissions accrue). They’ll also receive community recognition and special community rewards. Suggest 100 products, potentially earn a $1000.

  6. Why should I participate?

    We are just getting started and we need you, so we can all be cool. This is all about exercising some of those unused mental capacities, making a meaningful contribution, and doing a good thing by helping each of us locate the coolest stuff on the planet. It takes a community of real people and their real opinions to create a real Cool Products store. Cool Products is like the backyard fence for shoppers. Members are invited to look through categories of interest and tell the community what they think. We hope its fun to join groups of interesting people to expand and renew products within categories for the benefit of everyone. We're all about enlisting people in their spare time to share unique finds from the long tail of the web (anywhere and everywhere online). This is the people’s store, kind of a giant wish list, and we’re only cool with the help of people like you. The system will grow if people care about it, it will die if they do not. Help us figure out how to encourage people to care about it.

    Please participate in this emerging social eco-system. It's a living, growing system... aspiring to be user friendly, user created & enjoyable. Test it out and tell us what you think. We'll listen and respond.

  7. What is the mission?

    Our mission is to make discovery easy & rewarding & to facilitate categories that are fresh and inspiring. On the broadest level, CoolProducts.com is people, organizing information on the world's products. Users should sense that they can select products without undue influence from manufacturers or advertisers. It should all be simple and to the point.

  8. Why did you start this thing?

    In 2007, we had an ambitious idea. With the cost of technology coming down we decided we could form a group of friends, colleagues, and exceptional web developers to create a people driven online community for sharing great product ideas from all over the web. We wanted to join the online revolution and we wanted to join it specifically in the cool product arena. We're all busy people and shopping takes too long. Right now we are looking for people who like this dream and care to join.

  9. Question not listed here?

    Feel free to give us your feedback via our tool on the left, or via our Contact Us page