Monday through Friday this week Amazon’s Gold Box Deal-of-the-Day will be deals on complete seasons of TV shows. Today’s deal is seasons 1-3 of Lost for $79.99. Who knows what the rest of the week will bring? Check back every day!
Woot has a Woot-off going on today. How long it will last is anyone’s guess. Cancel your plans for the weekend and get on over there.
We’ve added a new site to froomb.com today. Flat Screen Universe brings you a daily deal on flat-screen HDTVs. Make sure you pay them a visit!
Today’s Featured Site is Game du Jour. Their tag line is “One
Day. One Game. One Incredible Deal.”
Game du Jour was founded in 2006 by Philippe and Fabienne Piernot. Philippe is an interesting guy with a very impressive resume. Make sure you read his bio. Philippe and Fabienne’s son Benoit started helping with the business earlier this year. They run the business from their home in Palo Alto, CA.
Philippe was trained as an engineer with Ph.D in Computer Science and has extensive startup experience. Fabienne was trained as an architect and also has some business experience.
Game du Jour is the third business started by the Piernots. Their first was Zowie, a toy company acquired by Lego in 2000. The second was 995 SOFT, a mobile software publisher sold to Paris-based Filao in 2005.
I asked Philippe how he learned of the DOD phenomenon; his answer was a familiar one. “A friend of ours told us about Woot back in 2006. We loved the idea and shortly thereafter discovered that the deal-of-the-day concept was being applied to other verticals.
“Fabienne and I are both avid gamers (I like console action/adventure games while she enjoys online casual games.) After learning of the deal-of-the day phenomenon we realized that no such site existed for downloadable games. Game du Jour was born and we launched on our wedding anniversary, December 12, 2006.
“The website itself was built using a customized version of WordPress during the fourth quarter of 2006. In parallel to the implementation effort we signed up with various affiliate programs and started contacting game developers. We launched a 4 page website on December 12, 2006 (home page featuring the game of the day, about us, contact us and privacy policy pages.) A few weeks later we decided to expose past featured games to give our customers more buying choices and to improve our rankings with search engines. In 2007 we introduced browse-by-category, browse-by-developer, search and in 2008 we launched deal previewing capabilities.”
What kind of problems did you have getting your site started? What would you do differently if you could do it over? “Development was a non-issue. Our initial concern was that it would be difficult to convince game developers to participate in our program. In practice we found out that developers were very receptive to the idea, first because of the exposure we give them and second because each deal only runs for 24 hours, alleviating any sales cannibalization concerns they might have.
“The biggest challenge is to feature a new product every day. It takes time and effort to locate products, test them and create the product description page.”
How do you find merchandise to sell? “We manually compiled a pretty large list of game developers and publishers using various online sources: affiliate program catalogs, game review sites, developer forums etc. We then ask each developer or publisher if they are interested in having their games featured on Game du Jour.”
What advice would you give to someone who’s thinking of starting a DOD site?”
Promoting a site is an art in itself. I asked Philippe how he promotes Game du Jour. “We use as many tricks of the trade as we can:
Thank you Philippe!
We’ve added two new sites to Froomb.com for your delectation. Killer Wii Deals brings you a great deal on a different Wii game or accessory every day, and Monster Cinema searches the Earth for the best deals on monster movies. Get on over there and buy something so these guys don’t get discouraged!
This is actually a 3-day deal, not a deal-of-the-day, but it’s too good to not pass on. From today through April 27 Lane Bryant is offering 40% off anything on their site! That’s an incredible deal so if you know anyone who shops Lane Bryant make sure they know about it.
I’m adding Wallet Pop to the DOD list today. Theirs isn’t the typical daily deal in that they find great deals that others are running, but they usually come up with some interesting stuff. Today’s deal is “Dogfights in the dining room! Mini RC airplane $49.99.” Let me know what you think of them.
Today is Earth Day and several stores are offering Earth Day specials (good today only):
That’s all for now.
Today we are adding 2 new deal-of-the-day sites to froomb.com. They are:
That’s all! Make sure you check out these deals!
We’re back! We were away a little longer than I expected (actually a lot longer). We haven’t had a Featured Site for a while, so here we go…
Today’s featured deal-of-the-day site is NewBargains.com. NewBargains was formerly known as BlueBroom.com - “Sweeping the Internet with Incredible Deals” - but then changed their name to NewBargains.com “due to better name (and meaning) recognition.” They originally launched BlueBroom in October 2006, then launched NewBargains in March 2008.
The driving force behind NewBargains is Gary Cummings, CEO and owner. He has two partners who do the web design work and marketing. All three are involved in the catalog/direct marketing industry. Gary has a Bachelor of Computer Information Systems degree.
I asked Gary if this is his first business venture. “I was involved in launching a website called BHOP (Business Home Page) at about same time MySpace and other Social Networking sites were taking off in early 2000’s. This site attempted to tap in on Business Networking, but funds prevented it from continuing.”
Gary learned of the deal-of-the-day phenomenon the same way most of us did - he discovered Woot and immediately saw the possibilities of the DOD concept for niche marketing. Enter BlueBroom!
I asked Gary if his site is an extension of another business. “Actually many others. We basically sell overstock items from other companies who drop-ship for us.” Gary’s site has a lot more that just the daily deal - they have a wide variety of merchandise available at substantial discounts.
What kind of advice does Gary have for anyone thinking of starting a DOD site? “Make sure you have a solid site and take advantage of all aspects of SEO (search engine optimization).” He has tried several different ways to promote the site, but “we mainly rely on solid SEO. World of mouth and DOD aggregator sites” (such as Froomb.com) “help tremendously.”
What is Gary’s opinion on the future of DOD? “It’s definitely growing. I think having truly great deals is the key to success.”
Thanks Gary, and good luck!