Published October 31st, 2006
in Business Social and Shopping Coupons.
RetailMeNot creators are looking to replicate the success of BugMeNot (which is also their web site) by taking a similar approach and applying it in a different field — online shopping.
While BugMeNot is a repository of login/password data for different web sites — RetailMeNot stores coupon codes for online retailers. This taps into the market of traditional coupon databases like CurrentCodes and DealCoupon as well as the social bargain hunting sites like Trezr.
The distinct thing about RetailMeNot is their bookmarket which brings the coupons to where you really need them — your shopping cart. Bookmark the link in your browser and go shopping. When you found what you need — check if there is a coupon for it with a single mouse click.
While the web site is full of bogus coupons right now — inevitable result of sudden publicity — I expect the dust to settle down and the “social” part to kick in. Just need to give it some time.
Thanks to the folks at Consumerist for this tip.
Published October 26th, 2006
in Business Social and Business: Strategy.
I have previously mentioned Judysbook’s new home page design here. After looking at it some more I decided that the event deserves a special coverage. Judysbook traditionally has been a destination to get reviews for your local businesses and is competing with such web sites as Yelp and Insiderpages. On September 13 they announced a new direction which actually got them into a much busier market niche. The announcement produced 22 mainly negative comments at the usually scarce for comments company blog. Here are just a few:
UGH! It’s just awful. If I wanted a shopping site, I would go to Amazon, or eBay. I go to Judy’s Book intentionally to get insight into and opinions from MY community…
…Why change what was unique about book? There are better deal sites all around, and this concept won’t gain traction the way you are thinking. You’ve just lost a user fellas!…
…Ick. I hate it. What used to be a review website has turned into nothing more than a mechanism for commercialization.
So why the change? Well, the answer seems to be fairly obvious: money. Before you flame me off let me lay down my thoughts.
- Judysbook has been on the market for longer than Yelp and about the same time as Insiderpages yet it seems to be struggling to compete with the two in all aspects.
- Monetizing reviews business certainly takes more effort than living off of sales commission.
- “Social” is the latest buzz word and it is quickly spreading to on-line shopping. As Bob Tedeschi from N.Y. Times has put it “These sites are hoping to ride the MySpace wave by gathering people in one place to swap shopping ideas.”
The owners obviously got so sold on the “social” part that they rushed off to implement it without giving much thought as to how they are going to integrate it with the existing features.
As a company, we’ve had a bigger appetite for feature and scope than what we’ve been able to digest in terms of delivering users a quality user experience. I am aware of this fact and it is a flaw in our culture that I am working hard to correct.
The last quote is straight from Judysbook’s CEO Andy Sack’s blog.
I personally have nothing against a desire to make an extra buck or two - I just hope Andy has thought it through. Such drastic changes may very well send the old timers running to look for alternatives and I honestly don’t wish that to happen. Judysbook has built a devoted community which is their single biggest asset IMHO. My advice will be - don’t bet everything you have - no matter how green the pot may look.
Published October 24th, 2006
in Business Social.
A small California based start-up has recently made appearance with a sneak peek at their soon to be shopping portal full of consumer product reviews. Earlier this year this same company started offering product reviews outsourcing to big and small retailers for free. That is right, they offer service that such companies as BazaarVoice.com are charging thousands for. How is it possible? Here is their story on it. In a nutshell:
- PowerReviews will use the reviews they collect from their clients customers to build their own shopping web site and will monetize it via affiliated sales commission.
- PowerReviews will license the technology to businesses who themselves want to maintain the product reviews database.
The idea sounds great and PowerReviews team is working hard to get into the market. Among other things, they are patenting a number of leading edge technologies to make use of their services by retailers as easy as possible. The real question is, as a portal will they be able to compete with the behemoths like Epinions and Amazon who currently dominate the market? The answer to this question ultimately defines if they stay afloat 2 years from now or not.
My personal opinion is that they have a very good shot at it. Unlike TheFind - one of the price comparison engines I reviewed earlier - PowerReviews doesn’t sacrifice the quality of the information they provide by taking a different approach to monetizing their idea. Their business model looks sound and they should be able to pull it off.
Published October 18th, 2006
in Business Social and Money Saving Tools.
There are total of 349 Digg imitators out there according to this blog. Is this a lot? Apparently not. One more web site can now boast social shopping and voting for deals as the main force keeping their shopping deals supply fresh. Dealigg has recently made appearance in the cyber-news which went mostly unnoticed.
If you are familiar with dealspl.us and dealspy.org then you will probably notice the similarities among the three. I am not certain about dealspl.us but dealspy.org and dealigg.com both use Pligg - a popular open source content management platform - which partially explains the similar looks.
In general the web site looks OK although somewhat unfinished. The “Privacy Policy” and “Terms of Use” links are both broken and the styling could be somewhat refined. There are rough edges here and there.
An advice to Dealigg developers. Spend more time and effort marketing your web site. Should you choose Digg for your announcement do not repeat the mistake I made. Do it like the clever people have done it. Find an active user with a lot of friends/followers ready to digg his/her submissions and let them submit your story. This is the drawback of all digg style sites - including yours now 
- the news entry has to hit the front page before the second wave of diggers - those who never even look into upcoming news section - will pick it up and make a hit out of it. Digg is not ideal - it can be played.
As for the digg-style bargain hunting clones (or mods) - the market is ripe. Give it more time and you will see more sites like these popping up.
Update 11/19: If this site takes off you won’t be needing connections or bots anymore to play Digg. 
Published October 4th, 2006
in Business Social and Money Saving Tools.
I would like to welcome a new addition to our collection of popular bargain hunting sites which is due for an update later this month. This new web site has been just a few months in the wild and yet it seems to be attracting plenty of attention. Lets us see if this is a long lived fame.
The concept is similar to Digg in the sense that people can submit links and then get them Trezr’d (voted for). When you submit a link you pick a category (no tags folks?). They also distinguish deals, coupons, and money saving tips as 3 major categories. A single vote equals to a silver coin. Several silver coins is a golden one. Only links with a golden coin are kept in the system (for up to 3 months according to their FAQ). The smaller unpopular items are removed after a while (a sort of garbage collection). Naturally the top picks (7 of them from each: deals, coupons and tips) get to the front page.
The web site is very nicely designed in Web2.0 style with rounded corners and a lot of gradient colors. I opened an account for a test drive and had a very nice impression overall.
When you submit a deal you are currently not allowed to attach an image. There are also no special fields for the item price or discount. You are basically limited to several sentences to describe your item. In that respect Trezr is behind dealspl.us or other web sites specialized in on-line shopping.
A very smart move on their part is the incentive program Trezr offers to the people submitting links. It is a revenue sharing via Google advertising. I personally think there is a major conceptual difference between sharing ad revenue and allowing people to use affiliate id in the links they submit (read more here about monetary side of it). With the first approach you as a submitter are more rewarded for the attention the link generates. With the second approach your incentive is closely connected to the shopping transaction. Due to this fact the second approach is more easily abused (read dealplumber review here for an example). Why? You click on the link, your id is stored in the URL, then you forget about the original web site and continue browsing the merchant’s shop. Nevertheless your id is preserved in the URL and when you make the purchase the referrer gets their commission. This naturally stimulates referrers to submit more links with their ids creating a network of low quality offers.
One more twist to the Trezr story is the weblet they promote (see it on the right side). The weblet is essentially a web widget that you can install on your web site to display the links you submitted to Trezr (or just any links from their web site). It looks like widgets now are “must have” for a successful web site.
Also read this Trezr review from our Australian friends. As for the fame… I think even if Trezr doesn’t become a shopping destination due to the limited visual presentation of items for sale it has a good shot at staying afloat as a social portal where people can exchange money saving related tips. The time will show.
