Established customized price comparison engine: 24x7 shopping network

[uioreanu]

This is a 1st hand auction for all five 24x7 shopping network websites.

bookstore24x7.com expires 2006-May-05
cameras24x7.com 2006-July-12
dvd24x7.com 2006-Aug-21
poster24x7.com 2006-Aug-15
powertool24.com 2006-Aug-31

Selling reasons: insufficient funds to further develop the price comparison engines, superiod but unnoticed technology.
Features: complete websites with virtual categories, search and product pages, zero maintenance price comparison scripts. performant oop PHP code using faceted classification, advanced caching & urls, accepting user written product reviews etc. Product feeds from amazon.com, overstock.com, powells.com, art.com etc.
Buying possible reasons: price comparison engine for books, digital cameras, dvds, posters and power tools, global branding, product comparison business development, paid product reviews. With proper investment the complex price comparison engine can be turned into a fully featured product.

Starting price: $500
Increments: $50, no BIN.
Selling end date: 48 hours
Payment: Paypal

Traffic details:
bookstore24x7.com: 151k uniques in April 2006. Full webalizer stats
cameras24x7.com: 2k uniques in April 2006. Full webalizer stats
dvd24x7.com: 57k uniques in April 2006. Full webalizer stats
poster24x7.com: 20k uniques in April 2006. Full webalizer stats
powertool24.com: 32k uniques in April 2006. Full webalizer stats

Scripts used: PHP4&MySQL4, currently on a dedicated server. Installation & domain names are included (currently registered with Pairnic).

 

[tdnetworks]

Where does the traffic come from? Over 70% is direct request but i'm sure not that many ppl just type in the address....

 

[uioreanu]

traffic and revenue overview

traffic is driven by search engines mostly (sites are doing pretty good in yahoo, msn, google SERPs); also via few backlinks and direct boomarks. Some keywords are displayed in the Search String section (in the webalizer stats). As you might already know, you can check backlinks here: bookstore24x7. The traffic grew organically, without adwords or seo campaigns.

in terms of revenue (I got a PM about this topic), it's driven by associate programs and Google Adsense. Besides the obvious Amazon associate program, there are various other associate programs (Overstock, Powells, alibris, cj.com, art.com). In total, current revenue is $100-$150 a month, with no maintenance from my side since about a year.

 

[chimaera]

Can you show any revenue proof?

And why selling so cheap? Or aren't you planning on selling for $500?

 

[cashable]

$500 - Can you post or PM me proof of revenue for the four months in 2006?

 

[uioreanu]

amazon associate:
last 4 months 2006: attached camcoshop_curr4.jpg
last 4 months 2005: camcoshop_last4.jpg

(technical explanation starts: in this page f.e., this link gets translated to the associate id used in the report. Proof: use this http header tool, enter the url and disallow auto-follow location. btw, /link/* are forbidden using /robots.txt. The camcoshop9-20 is the banner I introduced in late december on cats& homepage /tech explanation end)

art.com
last 4 months 2006: art_curr4.jpg
last 4 months 2005: art_last4.jpg

plus of that there is the monthly google adsense revenue; which I can't extract so easy from the current setup but could be estimated based on traffic. It's pretty obvious that the current adsense presence is not fully explored (bottom of product pages only). Also there is other associate revenue, and cj.com revenue. The trend is slightly downwards, because as I said, since about a year I run no maintenance on them.

The initial price is indeed low if I consider the amount of time/code involved, remember that this is all custom work; not some script kiddie copy&paste; but I have to be realistic and admit that I lack the ability to market my skills.

 

[uioreanu]

Or aren't you planning on selling for $500?

To be honest I have to like the ending price.
@mouseketrips is your post an offer?

 

[macooper]

I'll bid $550

Does the script have any kind of admin interface ?

 

[cashable]

To be honest I have to like the ending price.
@mouseketrips is your post an offer?

It is, but I have a few concerns.

1. You state you have done little work on the site, how much work is involved to keep the site up to date? What is the process exactly? When I go to the bookstore site, only one of Amazon's top 20 list is in the site, the rest are no where to be found. I would assume that is because the site has not been updated for sometime. How hard is it to update, do you have to do it one book at a time?

2. Is the upkeep process the same for each site?

3. Can we see a shot of the admin area?

4. Please renew the bookstore domain, it expires tomorrow.

Thanks.

 

[uioreanu]

there is an admin interface for latest site searches, latest search engine keywords and latest website patterns (subsequent pages users visited); see attachment

The rest of the scripts are running in command line interface (PHP CLI) mode.

As I said, these websites were updated about one year ago, therefore if one wants to turn them into a live price comparison engine some maintenance work is required. That's the very reason why I am trying to sell them, I don't have the budget to run maintenance/promotions/market them.

@mouseketrips
1. I didn't run any update/maintenance work since a year, but the scripts are all there. If they work or not I will need to check. I used to have ftp access with merchants that contained CSV files that were parsed and were used to update the db data.
2. the principle is similar. there are php scripts to be run in background for price/availability update.
3. please look at the bookstore_admin.jpg in my latest post
4. the bookstore domain was renewed with pairnic. I'm transfering them to godaddy because of budget reasons, in case I am unpleased with the auction result.

Thank you for your offers so far

 

[seomasters]

$600 bid from me.

 

[uioreanu]

seomasters, thank you for your offer.

There's a little more than an hour to go..

 

[seomasters]

seomasters, thank you for your offer.

There's a little more than an hour to go..

I hope I win.

 

[uioreanu]

I hope you win too, but I won't sell unless the final price is ok by me. It's still way below it.

thanks a lot for all your offers and questions, but I feel that my work is a bit underpriced. I did have all the time the intention to sell but I thought the price will grow organically towards something I will like too. If I should have said that at first, it's my first selling attempt.

If you want to comment feel free to do so.

thanks a lot!

 

[seomasters]

What is your reserve price ?

 

[hozt]

Are the products setup one by one? Do you have to link products at amazon with buy.com and overstock? Does it pull live prices and availability? I am also interested in what the selling price is.

 

[uioreanu]

I would sell the websites for a price between 2k-2.5k.

I just looked and the books comparison is using text feeds from overstock, amazon and powells. Yes, the filling script runs one book at a time. For alibris there is a live HTTP feed. For amazon there is a prices/availability update script there (using aws 4.0 so far I saw).

my 2do list for the bookstore24x7:

- [90% done] import list of categories from amazon, parse it for wrong items
- [90% done] import best selling amazon books data (approx 15-20k titles)
- [90% done] import overstock data that matches these titles
- [30% done] run matching with other partners data (powells, b&n).
- integration of cross databases matching using ISBN / SKU / UPC

- code structure cleanup
- [30% done] speed/caching
- [90% done] search engine friendly urls
- [60% done] site legal documents
- [90% done] site help

- [100% done] caching on query level

- [100% done] all on the navigation level split into pages
- [90% done] prevnext on the navigation level for products
- [90% done] product level menu + rewrite rules
- [100% done] form protection for external links/price links product level
- numbering filter level (aproximations)
- [50% done] meta description/keywords filters level
- [50% done] meta description/keywords product level

- more partners acquisition: buy.com, bn.com etc
- gzip compression

The beauty and unicity of the websites stays in the virtual categorization. One could even disable the spidering of product pages via robotx.txt in order to get away from the amazon associate mud, and just leave the virtual categories expand into various user keywords. Try playing with the filters here f.e.

 

[hozt]

Are you planning to complete your list before it is sold?

Are the prices all wrong for this item because the update script has not been run?
http://bookstore24x7.com/b-official-major-league-baseball-fact

Why not run the update?

 

[uioreanu]

hozt, you have a good point. I should better complete these steps, maybe even monetize the traffic better then come back here.
Thank you all!