Are comparison sites the way to go?

[mrjibbles]

hello

I have been playing with sites for a few months and made a couple of hundred quid but nothing to write home about

Traffic is ok but i stick to one merchant. I have never been a fan of comparison sites, gocompare, moneysupermarket adverts get right on my man boobs

Is this the way affiliates should go ? it seems the good old review site gets a backburner now inplace of php scripts and sorts

If anyone could give me a bit of guidance as its a few months now and i seem to be on that treadmill from the gladiators which points upwards but goes down so getting nowhere fast

[jezaff]

My question would be, how can you compete with the big boys for traffic? At the end of the day I would suggest you need good content and an established site. Both of which take time? The major comparison sites will allow affiliates access to their feeds (afaik) so setting it up is easy? But you need some plan to get the traffic! You have to provide some "value" over and above what is already out there else you are never going to get anywhere? How would you plan to do that? If you have a good idea - go for it !

One thing I have learnt is that, unless you get lucky (ie with an original idea) then it takes time to build a network of sites that can start to make some decent money. If it was easy, we'd all be retiring by now !

I think your level of commitment is also key, are you looking at setting up a full time business and hiring some people (new comparison sites are doing this even now) or just trying to make some extra cash in your spare time. Personally Id think its got to be very hard to compete with the former if you are the latter? These sites have dedicated teams negotiating with suppliers, dedicated techies, sales teams, SEO specialists, etc. The peeps who seem to do really well out of this approach it from a full time business point of view. The "get rich quick" approach tends to yield some pocket money but, unless you get lucky, it will take a long time to make progress. But a journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step !

Try piggy backing off one of the major sites. Or, as we've all heard a million times, try to find an under exploited niche!

[maish77]

I been trying to get to these my self, I have loads of sites to do with different niches but find the whole datafeed thing abit confusing. Maybe I could be succesfull with it this way. Am also not into the writing contant thing, so good places to find content I know would help us newbies. By that way how do I add a sig beneath my posts without adding it myself.

Home

[kier]

If you don't like writing content there's a lot of ways around it. Article directories are a good source of content but bear in mind that it won't be unique which is very important for getting natural rankings in the search engines. However if you're building sites to drive paid traffic to specifically then it could be useful.

People will often recommend you start a site about something you're interested in, so that you find it easier to write but if you're still stumped (or your favourite things happen to be porn, viagra and gambling ) then it's probably easier to focus on niche areas where there is less competition. This means that you can write some unique content and still rank well without spending hours and hours on it. Try speaking to Smingle or Stu-foster who post here, I'm sure they can point you in the right direction.

[experienceadvertising]

I think comparison sites are a great idea. You can grab your piece of the pie by launching niche comparison sites and getting them ranked organically or promoting through PPC. Another good idea are "review sites", these are sites that compare various hosting providers or dating providers. I have many super-affiliates using these type of sites effectively.

[dougs]

As some one who owns and runs big comparator sites, some simple facts:

they convert better
You spread your sales round
hence not one supplier gets enough volume to take you seriously
hence your commissions can be bad

Obviously if you can get to send large sales numbers to many merchanats then the deals get better and it all ramps up. But then you need people just to manage the relationships.

We do 1000's of sales now across 30 or so merchants, we now have to have 2 staff just to keep the merchants informed and uptodate.
We have had to have 3 developers building a tracking sytem so merchants can get data from us about why they are not getting sales
We have 2 guys now keeping the servers running and the 30 feeds working.

Doug

[sussexrob]

Hi Doug

Very interesting post , cheers

Theres the debate of niche or large comparison site

Whats your opinion on that?

say samsung lct tv's compared to one large all manufacturer comparison site

Cheers

Rob

[dougs]

Niche is definitely easier...but the number of sale to one mecant is an issue.

One of my staff built a great comparator site in a niche and it does very very well, but his problem is that he does not send enough volume to a single merchant.

Imagine one niche and you are splittin your volume between 5 major PLC's. Its a niche that they don't know about, he is still on the lowest commision rates with everyone even though his combined volume in that niche is good. Not even one networks knows him as the volume gets split across networks.

Somtimes focussing on one niche with one supplier and trying to dominate that space, then you get noticed and can call the shots on the deal.

Doug

Doug

[Affi Liate]

You have to think about what the customer/visitor wants.

[1] YOU are trying to sell them something (albeit trying to get them to buy at the merchant you point them to).

[2] It's a no brainer that if you present them with prices at more than one supplier (price comparison) you have an increased chance of making a sale.

The problem for YOU is "how do I get people (in volume) to my website(S) who present a high probability of a sale???

EVERYONES problem here (90%) is that you CAN'T think WHAT to promote, I see it every day, day in day out, even with the guys I speak to now and then.

Unless someone (like me) says "right look at this:

I make £200 a day on this xxx-product-xxxx from £15 PPC (no competition)

I make £1000 a day from SEO on this www. xxxxxxxxx .com site (I'm Google #1)

I make £80 a day on this xxxxxx niche site from SEO..."

You will probably continue to be disheartened.

YOU HAVE TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

Go into your local newsagent ask Ali or Mike whatever he's called "What are your top 5 biggest selling magazines", buy 20 marlboro lights or something to keep him sweet.

Buy the magazines and look WHAT'S FEATURED IN 'EM.

You will find peach after peach.

I would love to show you just one stupid example of a site that makes £100 a day from £2.78 ppc day in day out. ..

But, I do enough for now as it is...

There is no BIG RED BUTTON (just yet) you have to persist and when you start to succeed just a little bit, then you begin to see the light and the peaches will start to land on your head, just like that Oliver Newton guy....

Affistein

[Leopard]

I think they're great.. if you can get traffic. And the only way to really get traffic without a big budget is to add valuable content o the site in addition to the comparison engine.
Do this with articles, reviews etc.