Ecommerce is booming and the players are going crazy over how to acquire more users. The easiest trick in the book is of discounts and coupons. The promotion cost is high with coupons and cash discounts but the fact that it guarantees top line is luring everyone, almost everyone. This is giving rise to not only daily deals sites which are now hosting discounts of new eCommerce sites but also a lot listing sites that give info on the latest deals on these sites.
PriceBurp is a discount and coupon listing site taking the same route. The site lists latest offers and discount coupons of eCommerce portals. Some of these listings are info on generic offers available at the merchant and others are exclusive discount coupon that opens up a route of affiliate revenue for them.
What PriceBurp is attempting isn’t new. Old players like KhojGuru have been doing this for quite some time now. New player like TrumpCodes is also a direct competition. The space mostly accounts on SEO for traction and that PriceBurp is doing very well. Though the site needs to do a lot to get good content (read, usable deals). Recently there are many blogs and classifieds type listing sites that entering the space. Given that there is no-friction of making a sales or setting up anything offline, this space will get more and more crowded with none of them adding any value. RetailMeNot still rules the space.
If you compare this to ixigo or MySmartPrice, the revenue model is same, through affiliate sales, but they add some value to the buyers in the overall process.
What do you think of this space? What are your thoughts on discounts and coupons to acquire users? Is it a long term strategy?
Some players like Flipkart and Makemytrip never offer coupons and are known to be doing pretty well.
[Naman is a startup enthusiast and has worked with couple of Indian startups as Product Manager. He is the founder of FindYogi]
