{"id":4350,"date":"2017-03-16T20:12:23","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T00:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/slickdeals-monetizing-frugality\/"},"modified":"2017-03-16T20:13:21","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T00:13:21","slug":"slickdeals-monetizing-frugality","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/slickdeals-monetizing-frugality\/","title":{"rendered":"Slickdeals \u2013 Monetizing frugality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you ever bought something online and felt really pleased with yourself, only to find out shortly afterwards that you overpaid by 20%? Suddenly that new pair of shoes you were looking forward to, is now just a constant reminder of the money you wasted. If you\u2019re anything like me, then the mere thought of experiencing this frustrates you.<\/p>\n

However, in the world of increasingly prolific and competitive online shopping, this is becoming more and more common. With so many vendors, selling the same items, with different sales, coupons, introductory offers and rebate schemes, it can be very difficult and time consuming to figure out if you\u2019re getting the absolute best deal on something.<\/p>\n

Enter Slickdeals, \u201cthe leading and most trusted online community dedicated for sharing, rating and reviewing deals and coupons\u201d. It started out as a simple online forum for bargain hunters to share deals with each other, ranging from multi-thousand-dollar luxury watches to free gift cards from filling in customer surveys. Members vote on the deals that get posted, and as deals receive more votes they transcend in status from Popular to Front Page to Fire 3. The best deals are curated by the editorial team so they are represented in a standardized and easy to digest format, and also receive the coveted community designation of being \u201cslick\u201d. Today, Slickdeals has offices in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, a vibrant community of over 10 million monthly active users (a whopping 80% of whom are returning visitors) and has helped its users save over $4 billion to date.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Slickdeals homepage – https:\/\/slickdeals.net\/<\/a><\/p>\n

What makes Slickdeals so great is the passion and engagement of its community. They will source and share deals from every corner of the internet and passionately debate the quality of deals and the underlying products. As an example, toilet paper is something that is relatively unexciting and inexpensive. However, on Slickdeals, there are literally fanatics who have years of data on bath tissue sales. If a bath tissue deal comes up, you can be sure that these people will let you know if it is good deal by providing a breakdown of the cost per sheet (adjusting for number of plies and sheet dimensions) to the nearest 100th of a cent. This is serious business, see the exhibit below.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You know you\u2019ve made it when people refer to you as the \u201cLord of Toilet Paper\u201d (https:\/\/slickdeals.net\/e\/9725052-angel-soft-bath-tissue-36-mega-rolls-toilet-paper-20-83-or-18-64-w-s-s-amazon?v=1&src=Site性视界<\/a>)<\/p>\n

While members receive no monetary benefit for sharing deals, they do get the satisfaction of helping other likeminded people save money and of knowing that thousands of other people are validating their deal hunting ability. Their participation is largely intrinsic. Slickdeals on the other hand, is able to monetize the shopping traffic it generates by collecting a commission which can range from 1% to 8.5% on purchases that are made by users who came from Slickdeals. To do this, once a deal is posted and appears to be on track to be popular, the editorial team will edit the link in the original post to replace it with an \u201caffiliate link\u201d. Click through traffic is tracked using these links through which Slickdeals can then accurately attribute sales volumes with the end vendor.<\/p>\n

Slickdeals also benefits from both direct and indirect network effects because the more users are posting deals, the more users will visit the site and start to post deals themselves, and the more user traffic there is, the more attractive it becomes for vendor websites to pay for advertising or share their own deals directly. As a result, Slickdeals is also able to monetize through advertising and \u201cFeatured Deals\u201d.<\/p>\n

So the next time you see a good deal online, before you hit the checkout, ask yourself \u2013 I know this is a good deal, but is it slick?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever bought something online and felt really pleased with yourself, only to find out shortly afterwards that you overpaid by 20%? 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