Shopzilla Sold for $165 Million

May 2, 2011 0 Comments

Shopzilla, the comparison shopping site owned by Scripps Networks Interactive, Inc., was sold for $165 Million. The deal is expected to close at the end of May. The lucky buyer was Symphony Technology Group LLC, which is a private equity firm. The price tag on Shopzilla was $360 Million less than what Scripps paid for the comparison shopping site back in 2005. Like many other large companies that complete buys like this, Scripps did nothing with improving Shopzilla and trying to increase traffic. They wanted the site to try and pad their overall revenue, but with increasing CPC rates on Google, the paid search advertising that Shopzilla used was becoming too costly.

This initial story ran by Internet Retailer just shows that sometimes these comparison shopping sites can be overvalued, but when the number actually come in, they can be sold for cheap. I realize that most don’t think that $165 Million is a small price tag, but it really is for a site like Shopzilla. They bring a lot of traffic to their merchant partners and get paid well for doing so. If Symphony works on changing the feel of Shopzilla along with diversifying its marketing plan, then the comparison shopping site could bring a good amount of revenue to the bottom line. Symphony indicated that there will not be any major changes for the merchants at first, but their might be some later down the road.

Kelkoo Comes to the US

July 17, 2010 1 Comment

One of the leading comparison shopping sites in Europe has decided to expand into the US. Kelkoo has been a dominate force in Europe since 2000, but now they are interested in expanding into other international markets. They will use Kelkoo.com as their US domain, where it used to provide links to their specific country destination domains that Kelkoo operated. They formally announced this expansion on their UK website and it will be interesting to see how they will be able to compete with the larger US players.

The US market is already pretty jammed packed with large players and many smaller ones. This makes the barriers to entry a little more challenging. While they have a good user base in Europe, they will be starting from scratch in the US. Kelkoo.com does already get about 1 million visitors a month, but I suspect those are European visitors, not ones located in the US. It will take them some time to get the traffic up to the levels of others in the field, but they will really have to work on getting direct merchant relationships. This could prove a struggle for a site that is brand new in the US market.

Once direct merchant relationships are established, I believe Kelkoo could be a pretty good site to use. They already know how to create a comparison shopping site, so they don’t have any technical barriers like others do. Currently, the site is only a lone search box with the logo. You can type in your search query and results will come up. It looks like they are using API’s from Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Pricegrabber, and some others. This will probably change once they get up and running and start getting some merchants to jump on board. I enjoy competition in business as it tends to regulate most industries, so welcome Kelkoo. Good luck to you in the US!

Build your Own Comparison Shopping Engine

December 21, 2009 32 Comments

Comparison shopping is a big industry with a few large companies at the helm. The biggest sites are the likes of Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Nextag, and others. People are starting to price compare before they purchase and they go to these type sites in order to get it done. Have you thought of starting your own price comparison engine to make some money online?

While you can create one from scratch if you have a coder, it will be very costly and time consuming. You will never have a change to catch up with the large players in this game. The best solution is to get a pre-made solution that you can tweak and market yourself. We are going to provide you with two easy ways to start your own comparison shopping engine.

DataFeedScripts.net – This company has created an out-0f-the-box solution for both the Shopping.com and Shopzilla API. Now, you might ask, why would you try to compete with them if you are going to use their API. We say that if you can take the time to properly market your site, you can be large like some other companies that use their API’s. You are not going to try and beat them, but just provide yourself with an opportunity to make money online. This script works on both API’s, but you have to choose either Shopping.com or Shopzilla as they are two different scripts. Both cost $250 for the license, but there is no monthly fee. You need to sign up for the Shopping.com Partner Program or the Shopzilla Partner Program first before paying for this script. They will need to approve you into the program and if you don’t get approved, then you would have wasted $250.

Once you get in the program, you can download this script and enter your API information. You need a web host that can handle ASP.net, which is usually a windows machine. It would be wise to place this script on it own domain if you had the opportunity to do so. You can change the colors and many different aspects of this script except for the API calls. This comparison shopping script is for all the categories on both Shoppping.com and Shopzilla. This will provide you with a general comparison shopping engine. You can get it customized, but it will cost you. You get paid by having someone click on the products within the script, so you are paid per click up to 80% of what Shopping and Shopzilla charge their merchants. You can also place Google Adsense into the script as well to earn a little extra. This is a good script that can help you earn a lot online if you are good at marketing and SEO.

DataFeedFile.com – This is a 3rd party aggregator that takes the products from merchant affiliate programs and creates a comparison shopping script for affiliates. This is a free script and provides a basic comparison shopping script. You will have to sign up for each individual affiliate program that you want to publish on your site. This script is best if you plan on doing a niche comparison shopping site, like electronics or automotive. This can be placed on a subdomain of a site you might already own or it can be used as a standalone site as well. You can customized things to make them look good and add any advertising that you wish. This is a good starting script to see if you can make it in the comparison shopping world and you don’t have to pay anything for it. You do need to sign up at Datafeedfile.com as an affiliate in order to get access to this script.

While these two options might not work for everyone, they are a great starting point to see if you have what it takes to customize and market a comparison shopping engine. These type of sites do extremely well around the holidays and if you run it properly, then you can make a good amount of money online without having to create a complex website with a lot of features. These out of the box solutions are great for anyone and can help you earn the chance for financial freedom online.

iMark Interactive