Next Generation Shopping

Well I am not really sure if I would classify this as a web service…

Jeff Barr over at Amazon had a blog post about a price comparison web service that I had never heard of.  It is called Price-Compare.net.  It seems very geared toward PHP / Amazon AWS developers.  Here is an example  of Mr. and Mrs. Smith comparison information from their custom PHP section. 

Anyway it offers a revenue share option that is Pay-Per-Sale % based rather than Pay-Per-Click (PPC).  Works with LinkShare, Commission Junction (CJ), eBay and Amazon. Interesting idea… I’ll be sure to look into it.

Revenue Sharing Fine Print

“Price-Compare.Net is allowed to withhold a percentage of any commissions earned or randomly substitute your network/affiliate id with one of its own.  The withholding amount and method of substitution can be changed after providing you with a 30 day notice via email or by posting a notice of change here.  The current rates are:
Date: Oct 1, 2005.  Withholding Rate: 20%.  Click Substitution Method: Each of your user clicks will generate a random number between 1 and 5.  If the number generated is 1 then a substitution will occur.”

The Price-Compare.net website itself didn’t look to appealing to me, and the number of stores returning information was not that many, but it is good to see some price comparison options for current affiliate marketers. 

It actually reminds me a lot of GoldenCan which is a service that allows affiliate websites to easily implement Merchant datafeeds and coupon data via a small JavaScript code.  GoldenCan is run by Asif Malik, who I met at Affiliate Summit 2006 (West).

[tags]Price Comparison, Affiliate, Amazon, Amazon Web Service, LinkShare, Commission Junction, GoldenCan[/tags]

Ok, it is official, a lot of things happened today. Yahoo! has finally added the incentive of revenue sharing to their API (so look out Shopping.com!). While this is a huge win for them, apparently they are not integrating the affiliate program into Yahoo! Shopping for a few months. So I will followup on how the program will work and find out what kind of payment structure they have for it.
Straight from Yahoo!

“Yahoo! is now accepting applications for a commercial version of our Shopping APIs featuring product search, price comparison, ratings & reviews, and shopping browse. The program, which is now in limited beta, is similar to an affiliate model in that it enables websites to share in income generated from providing shopping search and other services powered by Yahoo! Shopping on their sites. Whether you are building a local shopping mash-up, a next generation social commerce destination, or you simply want to integrate shopping comparison features into your content site, this program is a first major step in providing you with tools to help you generate revenue.”

Also, note that it is in beta and currently it is only “accepting a small number of applicants with special consideration given to sites with high traffic volume and fresh, unique content”.

Currently, our site SecretPrices.com utilizes the Shopping.com API as a backend. But close tabs will be kept on the Yahoo! Shopping program as it continues to evolve. The API is not only fairly well documented, but has an open developer community to back it. Shopping.com really needs to start paying attention…

[tags]Yahoo!, revenue share, comparison shopping, API, mashups[/tags]