Published April 7th, 2010
in Popular Sites Series.
This is March 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 February 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 3 less than the last month
The average deal site lost 8.98% in Alexa rank this month. The top gainer this month is webbyplanet.com (3.91%). The top loser is again gottadeal.com (-29.37%). It seems that there was recently a PR update - some websites' PR has moved up/down. Also, the Christmas holiday shopping hasn't completely moved out of the 3 months moving average that Alexa is tracking and so the overall trend remains negative. Please enjoy the complete list below.
Continue reading 'Popular deal sites – March 2010'
Published August 7th, 2008
in Popular Sites Series.
This is July 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 June 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 gainers this month are dealtaker.com (9.86%) and judysbook.com (9.48%), both continue to recover from the slump they got themselves into just recently. The worst performer is hot-deals.org (-20.51%) which is a very old deal site with a pretty basic design that I am sure holds together thanks to the loyal members it acquired since 2000.
Published April 5th, 2008
in Popular Sites Series.
This is March 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 February results. The list has a total of 25 web sites which is 4 less than the last month. There are 56 more in my database that didn’t meet the Alexa Rank < 100,000 requirement.
This a really bad month for all deal sites. None had a positive Alexa rank growth, and most of them had a double digit decline. I attribute the overall downward trend to two things, (1) the holiday season is now completely out of the 3 months rolling window that the rankings reflect, (2) online shopping is down due to the economic recession.
dealtaker.com (-40.93%) had a really bad month. Is the magic Neal Rapoport has projected on it starting to fade out now as DealTaker is being sold? But the worst result comes from another site. gottadeal.com (-185.05%) has been the worst performer for the second month in the row. They went from #14 to #20 in this month list.
Published March 27th, 2008
in Business Marketing.
Exactly 5 months ago I asked all of you to vote for your favorite deal site, and 375 of you did. The top 5 results now stand like this:
| Deal Site |
Votes |
| fatwallet.com |
82 |
| dealtaker.com |
82 |
| dealnews.com |
59 |
| slickdeals.net |
39 |
| markdownmonkey.com |
38 |
The poll was set so that each vote is bound to a unique IP meaning if you used your IP once you can’t vote again. This is not a bullet proof way of eliminating duplicate votes but you really have to make an effort to go around this limitation (if you wanted to).
The comments on the other hand were not limited by IP. With that in mind, here are a couple of facts that make me think the poll results are rigged.
DealTaker comments are spam
I analyzed the comments and it appears 5 out of 8 comments praising DealTaker came from the same IP despite different usernames/emails in the comment signature. Here is the IP used: 71.74.145.215
I appreciate if anyone can find more about the geography of this address. This of course doesn’t prove anything but I am just curious.
Only top 5 positions gain votes
If you take a look at the complete list of votes, you will notice that only the top 5 positions have gained any significant number of votes. The #6 is shopping-bargains.com with twice less votes than #5, markdownmonkey.com
I might be wrong but this fact tells me that the voting is done by the people specifically interested to move the deal site to the top 5 to get listed on the front page.
Results go side by side
This is not as obvious unless you have been watching this for some time like I have and is especially true with positions #1 and #2. I have been seeing it happen several times: as soon as fatwallet.com becomes the front runner, some magical force comes along and dealtaker.com catches up. I have not paid as much attention to #4 and #5 but as you can see they have very close number of votes as well.
I am really distressed by these findings and consider pulling the poll results off the front page. What do you think?
Published March 3rd, 2008
in Business: Strategy.
Yesterday Paul reviewed DealTaker and while we are on the subject I would like to make a quick update that last week Media General, a company that owns several newspapers and TV stations in Southeast (see the map below), announced that they signed an agreement with NARAE Enterprises, Inc to acquire DealTaker and the related online properties (PriceTaker, GiftTaker etc).
The financial details of this transaction were not disclosed but whatever the deal is, my congratulations to Neal! According to the press release, the site currently receives over 400,000 unique visitors monthly which is quite an accomplishment for an online company started 4 years back from a closet at home.
A short note to Media General investors. The same press release mentions that “DealTaker is profitable and has strong margins”. I am sure you all hope that it helps Media General’s falling stock and it might. You just need to make sure to fish out from Neal all the secrets of running a profitable deal site before he leaves. ;-)
For more information on DealTaker please read my interview with Neal Rapoport. Also for a closer look inside DealTaker’s office, check out this video on YouTube.
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