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.

Shopzilla Cleans Up Their Logo

July 20, 2010 0 Comments

Shopzilla, one of the top comparison shopping sites in the US, has cleaned up their company logo. Their site remains the same with their very bright orange background, which keeps your eyes very busy. The logo is the same theme, but they decided to do with a different color scheme that looks to be running throughout the site along with their merchant center as well. Their publisher program is still running with the old site logo, but they don’t seem to mess with that section of the website much. I have placed the two logos below, so let me know what you think about them. Did they do a better job or should they revamp the logo even more. As stated, this is just a color change with a small shopping cart angle adjustment. I guess with the old colors, anything can help.

Old Logo:

New Logo:

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