FAQ
General
CoolBeez is a service where one can find, request, and make expert recommendations to help friends and general public choose various goods and services. For the most natural user experience, we make use of today’s messengers such as Whatsapp, Telegram, etc, and also the unique capabilities of our AI assistant who goes by the name Melissa.
Our service is free. Moreover, if a recommendations is good and results in a purchase on a site of our partners, part of the purchase amount is used for charity and as a reward for the expert who created the recommendation
Experts
Any registered user can become an expert - creating one recommendation will be enough. The initial registration will not involve submitting a lot of personal data - you can register either through your existing accounts on social networks, or by creating a new account (name/email/password) on our platform. One can register on the site, and, in the future, in the mobile app. If there is any financial event (receiving a reward for a recommendation, for example), we will request you to submit additional data necessary for tax and other financial compliance.
It is not necessary.
Who is going to see my recommendation? Those who requested them? Or all site visitors and app users?
There are two types of recommendations: private and public (the expert can define his or her preferences). A private recommendation can be seen only by those who have a unique link to this recommendation, i.e. those for whom this recommendation was created, and those who were sent the link to the recommendation. Public recommendations can be seen by all users.
Recommendations can be only for books, or also for other goods and services?
At the moment we are testing our service, therefore we limited the range of possible goods to e-books sold by online bookstore LitRes. Of course we will extend the range of categories in the future.
At the moment, our catalog copies the one of LitRes, so it is only possible to create recommendations on books sold by LitRes. In the future we will add more sellers, including ones of paper books, and other categories of goods and services.
Yes, you need to find the book in the catalog first - we have a very simple interface for this.
The size and format of a recommendation is up to the expert who creates the recommendation.
Rewards for purchases made because of recommendations vary depending on the terms of the affiliate program of the seller, and particulars of the product bought. In the case of books, we are looking at the average reward percentage of around 5%.
Rewards are issued as reward points that can be used to receive gift certificates from our online shop partners, or used for charity, or a combination of these two methods.
Yes, it is possible to leave comments and put “likes” and “dislikes”. We are also planning a moderation system.
Yes, there are ratings of experts - they depend on the activity of the experts and usefulness of their recommendations to other users.
Rewards for purchases do not change because of the rating, but any user activity that is useful for other users or the platform itself generates opportunities to receive additional bonuses not directly tied to purchases.
It is not necessary to write a review to create a recommendation - it can consist of just a link to the book. A reward is possible only if the purchase is made through the unique link to the recommendation - therefore, yes, in order to receive a reward, it is necessary to create a recommendation, and share this unique link with other in one way or another.
Absolutely not necessarily.
In most cases, yes.
The link is valid for a limited time - in case of LitRes, it’s one month.
Yes. A recommendation can have an unlimited number of books in it, but we recommend to stay within a reasonable number for a more comfortable viewing of the recommendation - say, ten.
No, but a recommendation is useful only as long as the recommended item is available for sale by the seller.
Customers
It is not necessary to install the app - the links will open in internet browsers on all devices.
Our service will be available as an app for phones and tablets (app for iOS and Android are being developed), and also as a website that can be opened in a browser on any device. Our service is free.
You will be buying with your account on LitRes, with all your discounts. The price of the book is set by LitRes, so it will not change.
Only on demand, or if you expressly ask us to send you recommendations that may be interesting to you, i.e. subscribe to our recommendations.
In the app, you can view comments and public recommendations made on this book on our service.
There will be a “Invite a friend to recommend” button - theoretically, you can invite anybody, but you would need to have a way to contact this person - email, mobile, or something else - therefore, practically speaking, this function is limited to your contacts.
We are planning a public blog, where it will be possible to leave such requests.
Everyone who creates at least one recommendation becomes an expert. The general rule of reward attribution is that the reward is received by the direct recommender, i.e. you. In some cases it will be possible that the reward is attributed to both recommenders because of the peculiarities of the communication interfaces with the seller’s site.
