

201 days ago I asked for your opinion regarding savendar.com, here we go again. - savendar

Late last year I asked you to review my new startup, Savendar.com. I received a trickle of feedback from this community, but I ended up making so many changes I ultimately realized I needed to re-think my business.<p>I took a few months off active development to escape my self-created "Savendar bubble" and eventually reached a place where I could view the feedback from online communities, friends and family with some sense of objectivity. Needless to say the comments I received here were spot on.<p>http://savendar.com<p>I can't list all the changes I have made, but here are some of the major changes:<p>(1) Redesign the homepage. Explain more clearly what the site does.<p>(2) Lose the keyword search, use categories instead.<p>(3) Many people complained the site was only useful if they knew exactly what they were looking for, to help remedy this problem I have introduced alerts.<p>I think Savendar is a much more solid product today. I apologize for only including US and Canadian cities, I intend to add more if the site is successful.<p>I am anxiously awaiting your new feedback.
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colonelxc
Simple feedback: Is it necessary to have different (apparently randomized)
effects when changing between pictures on the left? Must have been fun to
code, but it is inconsistent (and confusing, getting opposite direction
transitions when always pushing the same arrow).

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savendar
No reason, it's actually a jquery plugin that is configured to make random
effects by default. I can change it.

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JacobAldridge
I think (hope) this is a useful target market because I've been working on
something similar (but completely different). This looks clean and simple to
use, and I think the categories are definitely a better way to go.

Are you only monetizing through the PPC advertising, or will you leverage
affiliate marketing from user submitted links? The latter was my plan
(although my idea was only ever a 'beer money' concept and Savendar is much
more impressively executed.)

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savendar
Thank you. My plan is to rely on PPC. Can you elaborate more on the affiliate
concept?

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JacobAldridge
My understanding (haven't put much time into this or implemented so take with
a grain of salt): if you refer purchasers to other sites where they make a
purchase, you can earn a commission.

The most famous example is Amazon. You register. You set up your links to
include the referral code. And, via that code, they know to pay you the
commission (Google problogger and you'll find articles on using Amazon
affiliate marketing through his photo website to earn revenue). (There are
caveats, like 'last click' which means they may find it via you, two days
later visit via another site, purchase, and the other site gets it. What you
lose on the swings you will gain on the roundabout.)

There are affiliate networks out there that will set you up with a number of
different online retailers. I think most are paying very low amounts, but it
scales with traffic. All of these rely on affixing the referral code to the
link yourself.

Where I got stuck was how to turn user generated links into affiliate links,
so a reader could submit (say) a link to a camera sale, and the site would
automatically affix your affiliate code to create the commission potential. I
found one company (she was based in London - annoyingly can't find the link
right now) that had built a system that would do this. Every link on a site
would be checked against their database of affiliate marketers, your code
would be added, and you could earn the commission.

As I say, I only ever got to the early stages and haven't progressed. But if
it's easy and ethical for you, it may be an additional revenue stream.

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gsmaverick
Clickable: <http://savendar.com>

