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.
Published September 26th, 2006
in Business Social and Money Saving Tools.
I have previously covered the topic of voting for deals and how important voting can be. I would like to dedicate this posting to the web sites that would not exist is they didn’t take advantage of the idea.
Building web sites that live off of people powered content is the latest Web2.0 trend. It has brought millions of visitors to such web sites as Digg and YouTube. So who are the players in the bargain hunting market?
DealsPlus is probably the most successful implementation of the concept. Do you need a proof? Check their ranking in our list of most popular web sits. Not yet convinced? Take a look at how much they got paid for a single front page ad. I am sure not many established web sites can boast $710 price tag let alone 4 month old infants. So what have they done right? Here are a few things:
- Frequently updated, structured and moderated content. When you are looking for a deal you don’t want to be browsing hundreds and thousands of offers that all look alike (which you would at DealPlumber – more about them next).
- Simplicity. The web site is certainly not cluttered. You can get pretty much everywhere with one or two mouse clicks.
- Good marketing. The initial iPOD and Flash Drive offering to the top users has boosted visits to the web site. Guess what? Those folks who did it for a flash drive now do it for fun!
- Great web site design. I am really having hard time finding at least a single suggestion how it can be improved. Well, from the second thought, they could have added price-comparison functionality if it’s possible to do so without sacrificing the cleanness of the site layout.
This is the runner up according to our list. They have done a great job designing the web site and thanks to their share deals & earn program they have amassed a huge number of offerings. But what good is the deal if you (as a buyer) really have no clue if it is the best value out there? I have browsed through the first 10 pages of latest deals and couldn’t find a single deal with a user comment or rating. On top of that DealPlumber is really lacking some useful features. For example I love the ability to click on the seller in DealsPlus while looking at their offering and go directly to coupons, promotions and other deals from that seller. The ads DealPlumber places all over its pages don’t help much either.
DealSpy is a classic Pligg clone. The creators have done a decent job beautifying it but obviously not nearly enough to lure the visitors a masse. It also lags behind DealsPlus and possibly DealPlumber by the functionality it offers. As the result, the site is pretty much dormant. The newest deal posted as of writing this is 1 day 11 hours old. Let’s see if DealSpy v2.0 improves the situation. Overall the web site looks like a low budget project done by a hobbyist or two. It would certainly help to do at least some marketing.
This was one of the first web2.0 bargain hunting sites I have discovered. It probably happened about the same time I found about Digg. It was new and cool yet it appears it hasn’t picked up ever since. Why?
- Devoted bargain hunters don’t use it since there has been no community behind the site to post & rank new deals. You really need some critical mass to get things started. This doesn’t seem to have happened.
- Main-stream shoppers don’t use it as well and the reason I think is this. Shopping is a very visual process. You really need a good wrapping for the product and by wrapping I mean a picture and reviews (or at least some user feedback). DealCritic lacks these attributes.
It is worth to mention that such oldie as JudysBook has recently joined the bandwagon. They are playing around with the concept as well.
Also read this interesting comparisson of DealsPlus and DealPlumber at Shoutblog and this one at RotorBlog.
Update 10/02: Popular Canadian bargan hunting web site RedFlagDeals has just intoduced the new site design. Guess what? It allows users to vote for deals… Who is going to be next?
Published September 18th, 2006
in Business Social.
The most popular bargain hunting forum has had a hard time last week when its users revolted over the change announced by the company to the way they calculate deal rating when people vote for the deal on the forum. The change was to remove “negative voting” which according to FatWallet “was often abused and rarely contributes” to a new approach where users could only “boost” (give positive vote to) a deal. Guess what? It produced an uproar and users exodus to the main competitor and forced FatWallet to roll back the changes.
SlickDeals uses a similar voting system but compared to FatWallet it is more user centered. If you are a part of SlickDeals community you usually give users “reputation points” for the good deal they post rather than “give green” to a deal posting (as FatWallet’ers reffer to the positive vote). Yet this reputation based voting system seems to be the cornerstone of the SlickDeals forums community. Users as they gain reputation get certain profile attributes and other perks such as ability to give negative reputation to other users and access to closed areas of the forum.
The idea of voting has been so successful that such newcomers as dealspl.us, dealplumber.com, and dealspy.org have based their entire sites around it and others are eager to catch on. They have certainly learned the lesson from digg.com success!
