developed CertificateSwap.com for Sale - Featured on Time Magazine, USA Today, NY Times

[MediaHound]

Here's a free press release template to get you started.

 

[DrewM]

The magazine write ups make that site interesting - but the revenue is pretty low and all in all I think the business model, although unique, is destined for failure. I doubt there is truly much interest in swapping gift certificates. The gift certificate market may well be huge - but the market of people wanting to take the hassle of swapping the certificate online is certainly peanuts.

The site is probably worth between $5 - $15K. I was quite suprised somebody bid almost $90K.

Now if it was 1999 - he probably could have raised $10million in VC funds - the VC's were throwing cash at business models far far worse.

 

[Jernet]

The site is probably worth between $5 - $15K. I was quite suprised somebody bid almost $90K.

But did they?

 

[WebCat]

.......or more likely will either fail completely or look for it up for sale in 3 months for about 3 or 4 K!

Heh Heh Heh! I must be a psychic! :cheeky:

 

[sellinbiz]

Ended again this morning. Barely broke 30K.

 

[WebCat]

Ended again this morning. Barely broke 30K.

Would you really be that surprised if it comes back yet again?

 

[sellinbiz]

Well... the reserve was not met so there's a good chance it will be back up again soon. However, if it goes up with a reserve once again bidding will really taper off. He's better off to set a minimum bid.

Would you really be that surprised if it comes back yet again?

 

[David G]

Looked at the traffic stats for May thru the link on the site and the fact AOL browser gave such a high percentage of traffic is really odd, IMO. AOL is just a small blip in my own website stats but according to the stats there it leads Internet Explorer. Oddly AOL is only 1.82% as far as referring domains go. Another oddity is that 98% of the SE referrals are from Yahoo! with Google not even being in the top-3 according to this
http://zablo.com:8000/_1087405281_/stats.htm
Another report shows a search engine I never heard of named Xanga.com delivering 50% of the SE referrals vs Google in 1 report and more than Yahoo and AOL in another, but on one report AOL is only 1% but a high 48% in the first report above. There are many other oddities in looking at the stats in addition to these. It all seems strange unless I am missing something.

Most browsers by brand preference:
AOL with 9137 sessions (48.33% of all sessions)
MSIE with 7016 sessions (37.11% of all sessions)
Other with 1433 sessions (7.58% of all sessions)

 

[DrewM]

Lets face it - if that site had mega potential he wouldn't be selling it. The starting bid of $28K is a joke. The revenue number is very miss-leading - you have to dig down into the details to see that in reality the site makes practically nothing - and probably always will.

Kudos for the idea and nice site & all the publicity - but he's right to try and offload it now at the best price possible because it aint worth much when the smoke clears.

 

[Phantom]

Yes. Must agree. GiftCertificates.com has the Gift Certificates niche all wrapped up already and an enormous user base.

Everything else is just "noise" in this space. Ive yet to see another site with much significance.

There isnt enough "value add" in swapping certificates to justify having an entire site dedicated to it.