Published December 10th, 2009
in Popular Sites Series.
This is November 2009 revision of the Popular Price Comparison web sites list. You can find the last month revision of the list here.
The change in rating shows the difference compared to October results. The list has a total of 33 web sites which is the same number as the last month. There are 18 more sites in my database that don’t meet Alexa Rank < 100,000 requirement. The average price comparison site has gained (5.15%) this month
The best performer this month is dealighted.com (41.08%) followed by ebates.com with a gain of (33.8%). The worst performer this month is bestwebbuys.com with a loss of (-18.12%) followed by calibex.com (-8.56%). Please enjoy the complete list below.
Published December 8th, 2009
in Money Saving Tips.
Elizabeth Sanberg at Wisebread, the blog I read daily, writes about her experience with ordering a GPS from Amazon. The deal was that she gets a free Wired magazine subscription and Amazon Music store credit with the purchase. Free music is fine but the magazine wasn’t what she wanted.
Guess what, a week later she receives an email that lays out the complete terms for the free Wired subscription promotion. Among other things the fine print contains this disclaimer:
If you do not wish to receive the subscription, you may receive a refund for the stated value ($10.00). To obtain this refund, please print and send a completed copy of the Online Form with a copy of your Amazon.com order confirmation to the address noted on the form. Please mail within 4 weeks from the date you received this e-mail.
The most interesting part however is that the same email states that Elizabeth would not have received this useful tip should she have opted out of Amazon marketing emails! It is great that Amazon offers this option to swap the magazine you don’t want with cash, but why in the world hide the terms in the (optional) marketing email?!?! Does anybody smell conspiracy? :-)
Published December 5th, 2009
in Popular Sites Series.
This is November 2009 revision of the Popular Deal Sites list. You can find the last month revision of the list here.
The change in rating shows the difference compared to October results and includes all deal sites from my database that meet Alexa Rank < 100,000 requirement. The list has 43 sites which is 2 more than the last month
The average deal site gained 17.38% in Alexa rank this month with 3 of them gaining notably more than the others: edealinfo.com (99.39%), judysbook.com (99.28%) and keepcash.com (98.53%). The top loser this month is again dealplumber.com (-13.43%). Please enjoy the complete list below.
Published December 4th, 2009
in Interesting / Other.
There was a lot of small news this week that didn’t warrant an entire blog post but I still wanted to mention them here since not all of you are following me on Twitter or in the Buxr discussion board. Here they are in no particular order:
- Walmart is staging a new price war, this time in video games. Last Wednesday GameStop’s stock tumbled 8.26% on the news and caused a discussion on the topic ‘can Walmart cause deflation’ on NPR Morning Marketplace on Thursday.
- Do you have a Google Gmail account? You can send a free post card to your friend with this free Google sponsored service. There are several designs available but all have a Google logo hidden in them.
- Lenovo is running a 40-day holiday giveaway. I usually don’t take part in these (just as I never play lottery) but there is something about this particular one that attracted my attention. Maybe the fact that it takes very little time to try? :-)
- Disney Rewards is giving away 5 points daily in December. You need to login daily and enter the unique code they feature on this page. What a brilliant idea to bring people to the website! You can redeem the reward points towards movie DVD’s, soundtracks CD’s or theater tickets.
- It doesn’t come as a surprise that Amazon beats Walmart and Target in a usability test conducted by uTest among the three retailers. Target came in last in every tested category. 600 testers from more than 20 countries took part in the test, over the half of the bugs found were at Target.
- New York Times rounds up several smart phone apps for reading e-Books. I use Aldiko on my G1 and it is great!
Published December 2nd, 2009
in Money Saving Tools.
One year old Chicago based startup is making headlines today. Groupon, a website that delivers sweet random deals to your email box each day has just raised $30 mil from Accel Partners, the venture capital firm behind Facebook and many other successful online businesses.
The idea is very simple - the Groupon team finds businesses willing to offer a deal if a certain number of people sign up and then features these deals one at a time on their website. If enough members buy in - everyone gets the deal, if not - no one gets it. The deals are mostly local service oriented discounts, e.g restaurants, museums, etc. The company started in Chicago but now offers similar service in 45 more cities around the US.
Groupon was founded by Andrew Mason of ThePoint. If you are familiar with the group action site you can quickly see the similarity between the two. ThePoint harnesses the powers of masses for social cause, Groupon does it to please the consumer in us. The difference? Groupon is now a profitable business and growing fast, ThePoint on the other hand… you can see it for yourself. This month monthly stats are 1.3 mil and 50K for the two domains (according to Compete).
The notion of using the buying power of masses is not new. A couple US companies have attempted to deliver, MobShop and Mercata (co-foundered by Paul Allen). Both shut the doors back in 2001. Later, in 2006, The Christian Monitor wrote about the trend picking up again, now in China. I wonder what is different this time.
The overall concept of “one deal a day” is somewhat similar to what Woot is doing with consumer products except that Woot doesn’t have any “must buy minimum” conditions - they themselves deal with the risk of underselling an unpopular product. What would it take for them to spin off another sub-domain to their Woot empire and start offering conditional group discounts on consumer products? My guess is that the limit doesn’t only add a safe cushion to the business, it also creates a certain appeal - “it is so hot, you can only get it if…”! I am giving the Woot folks a month. :-)
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