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?
Published November 5th, 2008
in Popular Sites Series.
This is October 2008 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 September results and includes all deal sites from my database that meet Alexa Rank < 100,000 requirement. I am sticking with the original limit as moving to 50,000 seems to cut some interesting sites.
The winner this month is again buxr.com with a gain of (22.36%). I am really happy that my idea was sound and our project finally gets some recognition! The worst performer is again the anandtech.com forum with Alexa rank dropping like a stone at the rate of (-40.11%). Something is clearly going on over there. If you have a clue - chime in in the comments
Published October 6th, 2008
in Popular Sites Series.
This is September 2008 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 August results and includes all deal sites from my database that meet Alexa Rank < 100,000 requirement. I am sticking with the original limit as moving to 50,000 seems to cut some interesting sites.
The top gainer this month is buxr.com with a gain of (16.84%). It was really a surprise to me. I knew our site would break 100,000 threshold but I didn't think it would come out at the top! The worst performer is the forum anandtech.com (-38.47%) which was also at the bottom last month.
This month Google had a Page Rank update and it affected many deal sites in a negative way. Interestingly though that anandtech.com was one of the few who gained PR even though they lost Alexa rank. By the way, read this old interview with the founder. The guy was just 15 when he started the site in 1997!
Published July 28th, 2008
in Business Marketing.
The project I launched with my partner last December has been consuming all my free time recently. It seems like my deal contests idea has picked up and we now have a few regulars who come to share deals every day. I work late nights adding functionality to the site and it seems to pay off nicely. No, not in monetary way. We have been in red since we launched and I don’t expect any profit for another year at least. Yeah, starting up is tough. ;-)
The experience however is greatly gratifying. On an average week day we get around 50-60 deal submissions and just about as many comments from our members. Unlike ProBargainHunter, Buxr is built around a generic open-source web platform and I enjoy the luxury of being able to add all the possible tweaks to make things convenient for bargain hunting and shopping, something I couldn’t have done with this blog. Wordpress is a great platform, but it is more like a Swiss Army knife. You can do many things with it but you will never be good at anything in particular.
So we have plenty of deals and comments at Buxr. What we don’t have enough of is opinions. Yes, opinions on shopping deals. The deals, even the best ones, don’t usually get more than 10-12 votes and this is not nearly enough to create a balanced out picture of how hot the promotion or a coupon really is. One - two members can easily sway the votes towards a certain niche/category. What is more important, members with friends can have much more influence on votes than those without (but this will probably always be an issue).
Either way, I think more participants would balance things out a bit and this is why starting next month we are launching one more contest. We will be rewarding members for inviting friends. Top 3 by the number of referrals will get cash prizes at the end of the month. We’ve got to find more people who could contribute to deal voting, and I don’t see how else we can do it effectively and without spending enormous amounts on marketing.
If you love bargain hunting and have friends who might enjoy it too, come and join us at Buxr.com for the next month contest. By the way, here is a photo and a guest blog post from our last month’s winner!
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