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But how does that benefit the search engine? Why would Google switch from a system where advertiser compete with each other to send more money to Google, to a system where advertisers compete with each other to offer the largest discount to their competitors? Especially since... they already do that anyway.
I doubt you could replace the CPC system, anyway. I know a lot of webmasters who use the CPC system to push sites that don't offer anything for sale--which wouldn't work with this system. Interesting for this site, but I doubt it would work for search ads or Adsense... unless I'm missing something.
I agree with Andrew that cash back incentives have been around for some time. What makes Jellyfish unique is that we are the first search engine to put this system into a competitive, auction environment that drives maximum savings for end consumers. At Jellyfish, merchants are able to do category level and product level bidding on their commissions, and the more they bid, the higher in our rankings they go. Thus, there is a liquid, efficient marketplace that allows competition to bring the best deals to the top of our rankings for consumers.
I liken it to the advertising auctions that happen everyday at Google/Yahoo/MSN, except our ad auction delivers tangible value to the end consumer in the form of lower prices.
You can read more about the system in my latest blog post (www.jellyfish.com/blog) if interested.
I hope you agree this is signficantly different than existing cash back affiliates.
In this model if I marked up my product by 25% and discounted it by 20% I will be ranked above someone who sells the same product at a 5% markup with a 5% discount and sells it at costs. Consumers are skeptical of "deals" and could easily grow to distrust such a system.
This is not going to revolutionize the ad business. Sorry.
One way to look at the difference in our model is from the merchant perspective: for the first time a merchant can use the same $1 of ad spend for both price promotion (driving conversions through pricing) and search promotion (paying to move up the rankings on search terms). I’m not aware of any other model that allows this currently.
And yes, time will tell whether merchants recognize the value and adapt to this system. I can tell you that the feedback from our initial merchant partners has been very positive. The key for us will be driving sales. In my humble opinion, if that happens, the rest will take care of itself.
But I, as many others have already pointed out, fail to see the revolutionary nature of your business. It seems that you have just taken an Ebates model and just automated the commision negotiation process through the use of an "advertising auction".
Now although that may be quite convenient from your perspective (even though I doubt it will help you attain higher commissions than through the traditional negotiaton process), I fail to see how that makes any practical difference at all to the consumer. At the end of the day, cool technology and automated auctions aside, if you are not adding any value for the consumer, then why would they ever want to visit your site? (other than to see a really nice UI)
http://jellyfish.com/users/signup?c=5856&di...
Nice one.
Looks like the boys at Jellyfish better clean the coding up on the signup page!
Or else you might have some people wondering why they aren't getting 95% back on their next Mashable consulting fee... Lol.
Good bits
********
G1: Interface is quite nice. Subtle use of Ajax to enhance the display
G2: Good that you can refine by merchant, manufacturer, price
G3: Transparency - at least they are being open about the commission they get and share, and potentially making more of showing the end user the sales volume to that merchant (i.e. how popular it is).
G4: hmmm.. that's it
Bad bits (things to improve....)
*******
B1: They haven't really made it clear enough about what they do. Is it a shop, a directory, a price comparison engine, or a cash-back site? I've been in ecommerce for 8 years now and I still have problems visualising it!
B2: I can't see the difference between this and a price comparison engine, or indeed any other cashback site. Merchants are competing on that all the day by discounting their products (which is like cashback but you see the effect instantly). Merchants will just work off ROI as usual. They want the most traffic with the minimum discount to users and if they don't get it, they'll leave.
B3: It typically takes 90-120 days to get your cashback! Ouch!
B4: Merchants have different margins and returns on different product ranges which means they have more success discounting certain product items rather than offering cashback across their entire range. I notice that they actually do let merchants offer better cashback on product and category levels but I don't know if this is a painless process for a time-constrained, already investing time in price comparison optimisation merchant
B5: Example: I searched for "sony digital camera DSCW50" (I actually didn't know which sony camera to go for but that is why you would use Crowdstorm (blatant plug)) and found the price at Jellyfish among a limited range of merchants for $232.41 which included cashback. Doing the same thing on Shopwiki.com found me a price starting from $205 and I didn't have to sign up to anything.
B6: Merchants have different margins and returns on different product ranges which means they have more success discounting certain product items rather than offering cashback across their entire range. I notice that they actually do let merchants offer better cashback on product and category levels but I don't know if this is a painless process for a "time-constrained, already investing time in price comparison optimisation" merchant...
Lastly, "voice of reason" highlighted a way for merchants to abuse the system, and "Bryan Bartow" correctly noted that not everyone shops on the best price (
as for the hype, i think they got it all wrong by referring to is as Revolutionary and antagonized many that would otherwise given it a better reception. it's far from turned the world upside down for the consumer or the advertiser!!
if they'd called it "evolutionary", which is the closest thing to progress it represents, they would not have raised so many hackles or insulted our intelligence.
anyhow, all the best with the business and your believe in you convictions.
-w
Cashback sites are adding product search. I've been working on it for months on Cashbaq but won't make this type of hype when the search engine isn't functioning to the level that users require.
There are two parts to good product search: a good search engine and a good database. It appears that Jellyfish has neither. I cannot find a single iPod or PSP. There are plenty of accessories but not the actual unit. While the categorization may be helpful (arguments can be made for an against it), it doesn't replace good product search.
I tried "red shoes". There were 21 red shoes. I did the saem search at www.thatshoe.com (Vinny Lingham's shoe site) and found 381. Jellyfish had only 2 shoe stores.
The only difference between Jellyfish and other sites is the ability for merchants to bid on their CPA. Well, Snap already has that as it brags about how much money it isn't making. So this isn't revolutionary. I am also not sure if it is useful. Merchants have been bidding for placement on some shopping comparison engines under their PPC models. The difference here is not just CPC vs. CPA, it is critical mass. These sites migrated to a bidded model after they had the critical mass of advertisers and users. Jellyfish claims 1000's of merchants (not) and has no users. While this may be a good idea, I fear that it will fail for lack of scale.
Assuming scale, will merchants want to take part in this? More importantly, will users care? Most users don't know about cashback sites and most who do use a single site. Will this be enough benefit to attract new users? Not with the exisitng product search on Jellyfish.