Price comparison sites..what do they charge?

[crazihos]

Anyone got any idea what price comparison sites like kelkoo and pricerunner charge their merchants for exit clicks?

eg if they pay us affiliates 15p for an exit click to a merchant site what do you they charge the merchant? Double what they pay us or more - anyone know?

Cheers

Crazihos - aka Nosey Bloody Parker

[pricethat]

Originally Posted by crazihos Anyone got any idea what price comparison sites like kelkoo and pricerunner charge their merchants for exit clicks? eg if they pay us affiliates 15p for an exit click to a merchant site what do you they charge the merchant? Double what they pay us or more - anyone know? Cheers Crazihos - aka Nosey Bloody Parker

It depends, they run like an auction as well where the highest bidder shows most prominent. It can range from 10p to pounds for mobiles. I think they can work on 15p to you simply because they pocket all the exit clicks in a period but only pay you one click per ip in a set period. Don't quote me on that but i think thats the case.

[Anyanka]

It depends on how high up you want to be listed. I seem to recall the DVD section ranged from about 15p plus per exit click.

You can of course set a budget. This time of year will give you the most traffic.

Edit: Pricethat got here before me. 15p seems to be about right then.

[steveaich]

Depends on the sector, between 16p and 35p basic, although some allow bidding. Health and beauty tend to be around 20-25p.

As a merchant, the ROI on these sites is pretty awful, which if they are using lots of affiliate traffic doesn't surprise me.

(Nothing against affiliates, just that if you are being paid per click, you don't care if the clicker is looking to buy, so the leads are less qualified than say a google ppc ad where I specify "buy product x now")

[pricethat]

Will second what steve says, not from personal bias but from what i have seen, kelkoo dont seem to be too interested where traffic comes from just as long as it comes. Take for example all the easy internet cafe's all punting easyshopping which is powered by kelkoo. These people are not in the slightest interested in buying from UK retailers and more often cant at all, i would not call that worthwhile traffic at all.

[Stuart]

It depends, most price comparison sites have a different rate for each category, and some allow you to bid more so that you always appear at the top of results, even if you are not the cheapest. In my eyes not true price comparison (but who am I to say), you can still see the different prices between merchants but in some cases a merchant with a higher price would appear top...

The traffic does not convert that well, having been a merchant on one of the big sites spending a few K per month, we just about broke even at Christmas but made a loss the rest of the year. Although we did have customers who ordered a second time by coming direct.

I second what everyone else said 15p would be about the average, I paid about 25p for gadgets on one price comparison site, some are using affiliate links as well to back-fill results.

Hope that helps

Stuart

[crazihos]

Great answers so far,

For those of you merchants that have used price comp sites did they get you to organise your product feed to fit their formula or do they use your standard feed and organise that for you?

[Anyanka]

I think Kelkoo supply you with their standard templates. What sector are you looking to advertise in?

[Rich]

Rate cards
Shopping.com
NexTag

[PeterVis]

In a previous life as a hifi and home cinema merchant we were paying up to 35p per click which still wasn't getting us to the top of the pile. Unlike Pricerunner, Kelkoo list their results in order of who has paid the most for the clicks rather than which one is cheapest.

As far as data feeds are concerned, they do have a standard but they will take data in any format just so long as all the information they require is there and just so long as you pay them monthly for the privilege.

For my ha'penny worth I would favour Pricerunner over Kelkoo any day

[crazihos]

What sector are you looking to advertise in?

I'm not looking to advertise myself, i'm just being a nosey affiliate on a Monday afternoon.

Rich - those links are great mate thanks, didnt think of those two but thats a real help.

I'm amazed that of the merchants who have used these PPC comparison sites nobody has had much good to say about the ROI's cosidering they all claim to offer the best ROI's in the business.

Obviously from a merchant perspective pricethat's pay per sale model is much more attractive - shame merchants arent willing to help you more mate...naming no names (Dixons - lol).