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The Category Winner: Tech + Shopping

Now I might be biased here given that I own and operate ResellerRatings, a tech shopping and store ratings site, but it’s my opinion that of all the different subjects that you could choose for your blog, forum or other content site, tech shopping offers you the biggest reward. I’ll present my case:

Plasma TV’s, Computers, and Electronics = Highest Paying CPC’s

When choosing your site’s subject, you have to give some thought as to what types of advertisers it will attract, either via Adsense or otherwise. A site about cars is cool, but it is going to attract a whole different advertiser than a site about finding bargains on Plasma TV’s. And the thing is, advertisers are paying more money to reach tech oriented shoppers than to reach users in most other categories.

Shopping.com charges its advertisers a minimum cost per click by category. Categories like electronics and computers charge a minimum $0.70 CPC, Flat Panel TV’s (Plasmas, LCD’s) has a $1.00 CPC, while other categories bring in substantially less like Travel ($0.05), Furniture ($0.25), Books ($0.05), Sports ($0.05-$0.50). Take a look at Shopping.com’s current rate card if you’re curious.

Why should you care what Shopping.com charges its advertisers? Because ad networks like Chitika are powered (in part) by Shopping.com, because Shopping.com offers its own affiliate program (with an API) that you can use to monetize your site and receive a share of these higher priced CPC’s, and because Adwords keyword bids tend to reflect these same CPC patterns, since these categories fetch higher per click fees across the board regardless of the distribution source (Shopping.com, Google, etc).

Bargain Hunters = Relentless in Their Pursuit

Everyone wants their site to be “sticky”, that is, for their users to keep coming back for more. You have to create a sort of addiction in the user where they just can’t help themselves but to check out your site several times a day and if your site is down, they go through physical signs of withdrawal. Achieve that, and you’re gold. I know women that are addicted to gossip sites like PopSugar, and bargains/coupon sites are even more addictive. People love a good bargain and the thought of missing out on a good deal is devastating, so they hang out at sites like Fatwallet and Slickdeals and relentlessly pursue the bargains of the day. Are people this passionate about coming to hear you write about the latest kitchen gadget or hear your comments about your golf swing? Probably not. But if you tell people how to save $500 on a laptop or Plasma TV every day, chances are they’ll be back. People love to be able to get cool stuff for less dough. They just can’t help themselves.

More Monetization Options

If your site attracts tech/consumer electronics shoppers, that is, you have a deals/coupons/bargains site or you have a tech/electronics site where people are coming to read reviews and do research before they buy, then this opens you up to a whole new world of advertising options.

Now, it’s true that a site in any category could setup shopping ads featuring products, but those ads are going to be far, far less effective on a general-category site than on a tech reviews site or especially on a tech/electronics bargains site. For a general category site, you’re much better off using the contextual power of Adsense to fit appropriate ads into your site. But if you know that people are coming to your site to find deals on Plasma TV’s, why not show ads for Plasma TV’s from Shopping.com or some other network that will pay better than Adsense, in a format that will convert better than Adsense? (showing product photos and prices will convert far better than a generic text link)

At both ResellerRatings.com and Dealighted, we built our own shopping engine (shop.resellerratings.com, shop.dealighted.com) using the Shopping.com API. This gives us total control over the look and feel of the site, lets us A/B test new designs to maximize conversion, and at Dealighted, the API gives us the added SEO benefit of having our shop.resellerratings.com pages indexed since the API pages are running on our domain instead of a third party cobranded domain like resellerratings.shopping.com (which we did use prior to building the API powered pages), and we’re mashing user posted deals into our shopping category pages (right side of the page).

People primarily come to ResellerRatings to read reviews of stores, not necessarily to look for deals or to shop. But these people are already in a “shopping mode” when they reach our site. They’re ready to buy and they’re researching store reputations, and we’ve designed our site to take advantage of this. Notice that every single page at ResellerRatings is designed to funnel our users right into our shop.resellerratings.com price comparison engine. From the top search box on every page, to the shopping category links, to the specific product deals that we show, the goal is the same. Sites that sign up with Pricegrabber and just stick a “Compare Prices” text link in their navbar are really quite clueless as to the dollars that they are throwing away by not designing their pages more effectively.

While I’m thinking about PriceGrabber: do yourself a favor and ditch them if you’re running a PG cobrand. You’ll likely make more money by using one of the many shopping ad options that I will present here while not dealing with their anti-competitive contract (which, if I’m not mistaken, prohibits you from running 3rd party competitive ads like Chitika). If you still want to offer a price comparison engine on your site, build your own using Shopping.com’s API, or consider partnering with us directly. We have created a limited number of ResellerRatings powered shopping cobrands based on the Shopping.com API like this one that we created for TechEBlog.com, complete with a competitive revshare of merchant clicks, for select sites. This way, you can earn revenue linking to our cobrand while also running Chitika or another 3rd party ad network on your site, no problem.

Your options for monetizing a tech reviews or bargains/shopping site with shopping ad placements are plenty. Chitika, WidgetBucks, Shopping.com’s affiliate program and API, ShoppingAds, and there’s another option you probably didn’t know about: my company (All Enthusiast) pays tech/electronics bargains sites for ad space on a CPM or flat rate basis (see the “hot prices” ad on the left side of Spoofee.com for an example), so be sure to contact me if you have a tech/electronics bargains or shopping related site and we can look into giving you an additional source of income, and you can test what you earn from us against what other shopping networks pay or better yet, just use us in addition to another network. Look for an upcoming post from me comparing all of these options.

All of this is also the reason why networks like Chitika, WidgetBucks, and ShoppingAds are popping up: shopping ads are profitable, and these 3rd party ad networks are capitalizing on the great Shopping.com engine and affiliate API. Shopping.com does all the heavy lifting to maintain their engine and their merchant advertiser relationships, and the 3rd party ad networks expand Shopping.com’s inventory out onto your site, while taking their cut and while optimizing what ads are shown to maximize conversion and profits.

So when thinking about the focus of your business, I think it’s important to understand the what and the how: what types of sites are making money, and how they’re doing it. You can’t go wrong with a tech + shopping site.

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Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 2:44 am and is filed under Web Business. If you like this post why not subscribe to my full text RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.