We have just launched a new site: http://Compare4.us It's a simple value proposition: Let this software search 3 shopping sources at once to save you time. A few added-value features like * articles on products * product reviews * what are other people searching for We have been getting a positive response from people at the Warrior Forum in terms of look-and-feel, functionality and general "coolness." We'd like your feedback as well. What do you like? What don't you like? What could I do with this? Most importantly: How do we make money with this? We are offering a standard affiliate program to do revenue-share on traffic. But we're open to anything reasonable. Many, many thanks...
How can you get so much traffic so fast??? Aren't there enough so price comarison sites? I don't get it: Why search "3" shopping sources? It compares prices from many sites...
Very nice site, am considering testing it as a replacement for a few of my affiliate programs. Is there a way to customize the URL so that the search box is pre-filled with the type of widget that I am writing about?
Thanks!!! Like I said, the people who have seen the site think it's really cool. I have an off-line investor ready to get behind it with some $$. The people in the Warrior Forum have said positive things as well. I just need a group of dedicated people who are serious to make a real run at marketing this... The rewards will be handsome. Absolutely... In fact, I want to show the forum here how serious I am about this site, and working together, I will make that modification to the software right now. If I understand what you're saying, you want the input in the search widget form to be pre-filled with a keyword that you can set? NO PROBLEM! And I really like the idea. That way you could build a bunch of different pre-fills depending on the page it's on... If you're handy enough, you could script that as the keyword will be coming from your hyperlink to the widget server. It could be different on every page..
Because this is faster and more convenient than searching all three individually.. Add in customer and editorial reviews on the products you find, and you have something that's fairly nice to use. Sort of a 'meta shopping comparison site.'
Good luck with that. I know the compariosn site Moneysupermarket is listing witha value of £1 billion on the LSE. Can you explain a bit more on how intend to share revenue other than simply saying its an affiliate program. Can you please elaborate on that. Thanks!
"How can you get so much traffic so fast???" Cross-promotion from multiple sites that have something in common is my secret... Work with me a bit. Perhaps we learn something from one another.
Okay, Padmi's suggestion (which was a great one) has been implemented... 1) Go to http://www.compare4.us/?p=Affiliates_2 2) We're discussing "Option 2 - Search Widget" 3) I added a new variable in the url to generate your widget called "SK" - which stands for "Searchbox Keyword". It is set to nothing as a default, which means there will be no value in the search box. However, set it to whatever you want and the search box will be pre-filled. Simply put whatever you want to show in the search box after the "=" in the url string and it will.. For example: <iframe src="http://compare4.us/R_Search/?cu=_0&SK=Ipod" style="width:156px;height:90px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0" alt="comparison shopping made fast and easy at Compare4.us"></iframe><br><a href="http://Compare4.us/?cu=_0" alt="search 3 engines with 1 click">Shop at Compare4.us</a> will pre-fill with 'iPod' in the search box... What other features do you need to help US make money with this awesome site??
Sure... As an intro offer, I'd like to do a 50% revenue share with our affiliates. We run an affiliate program on another site, so the link tracking infrastructure is already in place. It's a fairly standard approach: We give you an ID for your links (something like ?CU=1872_8jo8973). This is generated automatically on our sign-up page. Our servers pick that ID up when a user comes to the site via one of your links and we track your customer's movements through our system. When they click to a revenue generating exit, we both make money. We will provide real-time (I hate having to wait for daily updates) graphs so you can see both clicks and $$. You can use this to test as well... We do prefer a min amount before making a payment, but will be flexible on that at the beginning as I know "getting paid" will be a big concern for people. I've done integration with PayPal before, so we will probably want to go that way. We track source IP's on all activities as a precaution to make sure we stay within our TOS and contracts. To give you a feel of our volumes, we are currently running over 300,000 impressions per day on our blog directory. Every one of those impressions comes off our servers. We process over 60,000 RSS feeds per day as well - so we're used to volume. Let me know what other questions you have. Full transparency is a core value in my business.
qwestcommunications - As an aside, we have over 220 Blog Directories listed in our "Directory of Blog Directories" on blogskinny. Given your sig - thought you might be interested.
I had one other kinda "out there" idea... What about a big WEB 2.0 type button that you could modify with your keywords. You could probably change the colors too! I'm not sure if people would find that helpful... Take a look at the 2.0 buttons in http://Compare4.us already. If you think using those on your site, with keywords you select, would be a cool way to advertise, let me know. We could set that up in about 30 minutes and play with it to see how it looks.
I don't speak for the company, but it looks like they have multiple affiliate accounts going into a search engine, and when someone orders something, they split the revenue with the person who referred the traffic 50-50%. On one hand, a website could do better by going out and getting all those affiliate accounts themselves, and coding the links. On the plus side, it is very easy to link to the search4.us site, and there are several choices for most searches, which might mean better conversion. If a site has traffic, looks like it would be easy to monetize this way. For one of my sites, I coded in a lot of links to an affiliate. Then that affiliate dropped out of the program, so I had to redo them with a new affiliate. And I think many of my repeat visitors either don't like the company I have for what ever reason, or their cookies have expired and they order directly. In a sense, this looks like the "Adsense of affiliates" - they have lined up the affiliates the way adsense lines up the advertisers, it is easy to start, they handle most of the details, there is more variety. Very appealing for many small to medium sized web sites.
Padmi has it right... and I do speak for the company. We have a variety of other tools. We can make RSS feeds for you with your affiliate link nested in it. We can submit to eBay for you. Blah, blah, blah. Look at the site. If you like it and think it will attract attention from end-users, we have something to talk about.
Thanks mattjfrank. Do you have any interest in working together? If so, PM... Also - I was thinking about this discussion over night and had an interesting idea: What if I added a feature to http://Compare4.us where you, as an affiliate member, could build your own little comparison shopping mall pages within my site? This would be sort of a "niche comparison site" concept. It would have to be on a specific product or product type. There would be a place for you to add content and write-ups. I could even process RSS feeds into it... I would also give it a link from the front page. You would then promote your mini comparison mall. Clearly, you would be helping me a great deal by building content in my site. So in return for that effort, I would give 80% of the revenue back to the user from that mini comparison shopping mall rather than the customary 50% that I'm currently giving to affiliates (justifying the other 20% to cover hosting, accounting and coding costs). Does that seem fair? Since I have not built this yet, and it will probably be a little buggy at first, I'd be willing to give 100% of revenue to the first 5 people with the understanding that we're beta testing it. Maybe this is a stupid direction, but with all the positive feedback about the site, and the initial traffic volumes, it seems like an interesting intersection of shopping comparison with social networking... Feedback welcome / wanted.