Published January 6th, 2011
in Popular Sites Series.
This is December 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 November results and includes all deal sites from my database that meet Alexa Rank < 100,000 requirement. A total of 34 sites have made it this month which is the same number as last month.
The average deal site gained (4.29%) in Alexa rank this month. The top gainer is buxr.com (15.29%) (I must be doing something right for a change :-) ) and the top loser is again redtagdeals.com (-6.7%). Please enjoy the complete list below.
Continue reading ‘Popular Deal Sites – December 2010’
Published September 14th, 2010
in Business: Strategy.
This can hardly be considered news since Techcrunch and a few other media outlets reported on it two months ago, yet I feel I am obliged to add my own opinion since this story affected me personally and in a big way. My long time readers sure know that rounding up deal sites every month is not the only thing I do in life as one would think by looking at the recent articles on this blog. So here is the gist of it.
In late 2007 I launched my latest project with Mike Glozman of CheapStingyBargains and things went fine for some time. 2010 however marked an important event, one I couldn’t tell you about earlier but now I can. My partner chose to quit Buxr leaving me as the sole owner and the main reason for doing so is in that Techcrunch’s report. WhaleShark bought Mike’s business and part of the agreement was that he would not run any other deal site. This obviously meant I had to pick up the tab and continue alone.
Continue reading ‘WhaleShark Media buys several deal sites’
Published May 6th, 2010
in Popular Sites Series.
This is April 2010 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 March results and includes all deal sites from my database that meet Alexa Rank < 100,000 requirement. A total of 35 sites have made it this month which is the same number as the last month
The average deal site lost 3.83% in Alexa rank this month. The top gainer this month is anandtech.com (5.14%). The top loser is buxr.com (-17.87%) - yes, my own project seems to be loosing ground although I don’t see it that much based on the direct stats via Google Analytics. Please enjoy the complete list below.
Continue reading ‘Popular deal sites – April 2010’
Published November 30th, 2009
in Shopping Promotion.
This table is a round up of all deals posted on Buxr in the past few days. They all expire today, November 30. Some of these are the best offers I have seen in a long time, others are just average. Who has the best deals? I will leave it for you to decide. :-)
Published September 21st, 2009
in Interesting / Other.
This is just a crazy idea I had the other day and which I decided to write down before my mind wonders somewhere else and I forget about it. What if there was a website for bargain hunters that runs in a similar fashion as say Wikipedia or CraigsList? No ads, no affiliate links, completely community operated and based on open source platform. Would it make any sense at all?
I understand there are probably some bulletin board based bargain forums that do it but the phpBB is a stone age technology and has never really been meant to be used for shopping. What I mean is to have a fully functional social site with all the bells and whistles that come with a perfect deal site but completely owned and operated by the community.
Why would this make sense?
If the idea is novel the media will pick it up and it will spread virally offering free advertising (at least at the beginning). The members that join will make the most devoted bargain community that ever existed since they know the place is theirs and there is no owners behind the scene that set their rules and make profits off of the deals. Devoted members means more growth for the website because of all the free publicity and referrals they bring in.
I know from my own experience running Buxr that the web platform could be written in such a way that the community can properly format & categorize the deals, verify them, and also update them over time. To keep things sane, new members could have limited privileges but as they gain the tenure they turn into “power users” who can do more around the site, and eventually suggest themselves to become moderators. The community would vote (say once a year) to pick a number of moderators who then run the site for the next year.
The platform would be based on an open source code written by web developers volunteers who devote themselves to this idea. The only monetary expense is web hosting but it can be easily offset with donations since web hosting is dirt cheap these days.
So what do you think? Is this something even worth discussing? Does social shopping & bargain hunting have the scale to become a foundation of an open community like this? Do people even care about who owns the content they create and how it is used? Am I out of my mind even thinking about this idea?
