Duck + Cashback = CashQuack!
9 Comments May 27, 2008 / Posted in Affiliate MarketingAfter lengthy deliberations, concerns, worries, flipping coins to decide should we or shouldn’t we – heads you win, tails you lose … the duck has finally decided to enter the cashback arena. Partnering with the excellent eDeals white label system we’ve soft launched our CashQuack site.
But hold on a moment Jason, you’re not exactly the world’s biggest fan of cashback?
My views on 100% cashback sites have been expressed on this blog, but sadly that cashback model isn’t going to go away overnight. If anything it and other cashback systems are going to become more prevalent – so at least with our own version we can perhaps take advantage of cashback and offers seeking users.
As David Fiske suggests ” a high reward is more lucrative than a lower reward, but a lower reward is better than nothing”. If we can pick up users who might be lost “elsewhere” then that’s good.
So Why Launch The White Label?
With the white label we can keep Loquax as it is, and use CashQuack as if it was simply a new cashback merchant. The advantage is that if we sign up cashback people, they remain ours to promote to directly. There’s nothing worse than referring a user to a cashback site where you think you might earn lifetime revshare, only for that site to then promote their own 100% cashback site to them and you lose your user!
On top of that we can also use it in cashback promotions on other sites like Hot UK Offers and Freebieworld.
Any Other Reasons?
The CashQuack name was a big influence… let’s face it there are a few ducks scattered around our domains, so it made sense to continue the theme in this direction. Another important reason is that our main competition site competitors haven’t done this… yet… so it’s always nice to be ahead of them (but they no doubt will follow now they’ve seen us do it).
So How Will It Go?
Senthil at eDeals has been quite supportive in getting CashQuack underway and has been good in addressing my questions and concerns. Will people sign up? Will they shop? Will they prefer to seek out 100% cashback?
We will see is the answer to all three questions – but at least we have a branded tool and opportunity to offer our users – if it means they opt to use our cashback site, because they know it supports Loquax, over another cashback site, that doesn’t, then it’s an area worth exploring.
The main point is that it’s not the be all of what we do from hereon, but it’s merely an additional option for us to use to compete in an ever shifting market place! Essentially it will replace affiliate links that we already have in place for other cashback sites.
As for 100% cashback – if you can’t beat them – try and beat them another way!
I just love that name Jason: CashQuack has got to be the best name of any cashback site ever!
Congratulations on the launch of your new site and I hope it’s a mega-success.
P.S. If I can help in any way whatsoever, you know where to get hold of me.
Thanks Nadeem – will no doubt take you up on your offer once I’d messed around with the back office and started getting traffic into the site.
Jason
Good morning Jason,
Best of luck with the launch of Cashquack. I understand that with a white label website you don’t have the significant outlay of designing and developing the website from scratch, so there’s not really that much to lose– but don’t you think the Cash Back arena is becoming completely saturated especially now that Microsoft have now entered the ring with their Live Search Cash Back, which will no doubt make it difficult for UK Cash Back sites especially the start ups.
Lauren
http://www.sososher.com
Nice to see my words of wisdom used in a practical sense!
Good luck with it. I imagine it’ll do well for you given the success of Loquax itself.
hehe yeah thats a 2nd on the name. Are you worried that your “traditional” affiliate customers might move over to the cashback site? Maybe they were put off but are willing to give it a go now a site they use has its own version? Let us know how it goes
!
Lauren – yes the cashback arena is saturated, but the aim is to give our users who often head off elsewhere for offers/discounts/cashback an option to use that’s “closer to home”.
David – thanks for that.
Jim – there’s always a worry that we’ll lose some who have supported the site traditionally. However, many users forget they can support the site by shopping online and click off via Google, other sites etc. – so we missed out anyway.
The aim will be to build up a group of regular cashquackers and see if that will help it grow organically amongst the incumbent community.
i wish you the best with this new project but i think you made a wrong move because the database of users you already have, you wound have been better off running a 100% cashback with a yearly fee then taken a very small % with eDeals or better still setting up a discount code site as you would earn a lot more then with this deal with eDeals
Jason did you do the maths on what you would earn for the sales as you already have setup sites and section to market offers that eDeals have so you happy taking a very small piece of the pie its funny how eDeals shouts out 60% but if you take a look at it, its 60% of 50% so for a etc on their site for a £100 commission you get £30 on a £1000 sales but with a discount code site on a £1000 sale you get £100 even if take out the 10% discount code offer its still £90 even with 20% off its £80, £50 more then a cashback site.
i understand you building users with a cashback site then senting them to another cashback site but you already have a database of users their is no need for this eDeal cashback site.
Jason take a look at hotukdeals.com they use 100% commission for themselves with hotukdeals and yearly fee with their cashback site quidco and you have more members on your forum etc
hotukdeals: 105,473 members
Loquax: 168,552 members
Jason even if you setup a 100% cashback site and offer a company 50% of the yearly fee for running the site for you, and you market the site on your Loquax site and newsletters you would still earn a lot more moeny then with this eDeals cashback site.
i now the big problem is having the time to run a 100% cashback site and you dont have time but get another company to run the site for you and give them 50% of the yearly fee.
You see with John Lamerton had a problem with staff when becoming a “Corporate Affiliate” but i think the problem he got was paying the staff a wage then a % of the sales or big bonuses so the staff was just clock watching then helping HIS business grow so you have a company a % of the yearly fee plus big bonuses then they will work their ass off.
Jason its still not too late to go 100% cashback ; )
Interesting point John, we already have the discount section – this is just an additional option, however I wouldn’t take number of members as a good indicator of scalability.
105,00 users looking to spend money and search for deals is significantly different to 160,000 who want access to free competitions.
Then it comes down to active users – and then how many you can convert/convince to supporting the service you offer.
Another factor is this… eDeals were there and happy to talk to us. Another white label provider, of a very well known casback site, wanted set up fees etc and took weeks to respond to enquiries.
Finally, I’m not sure given my dislike of 100% cashback sites that I’d be happy contributing to the issues that they cause content affiliates who aren’t in a position to compete with them on an equal footing. Yes I could see it might be good for business, but the wider affiliate marketing picture needs to be assessed in terms of what 100% does to other affiliate channels… and it’s perhaps time networks/merchants realised this.
Jason
[...] his own cashback website cashquack.com I say suprised because as Jason is the first to admit in his blog, he has not always been the biggest fan of cashback websites and neither am [...]