Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by umangd 4017 days ago
ALl these price comparison sites work on commission model. They get paid when you reach the site from their link. I also think you need to obtain permission to list any ecommerce site. Maybe flipkart and snapdeal didnt allow Junglee to put their info.

Similar thing happened to mysmartprice as well, when they werewnt showing flipkart.

1 comments

As someone who has run a couple sites like this I can give some insight to that.

You don't necessarily need permission to display an offer but you do need a relationship to get a commission on the sale. These relationships can either be brokered through so called "Affiliate Networks" (most common) or when a site gets big enough they could be direct business development deals with the commerce site's marketing team.

It is a low profit business segment as it is (you have to generate a lot of volume to make serious money) so diluting it by including non-commission websites is not very common.

It is, however, somewhat common to list higher commission products near the top of the list. This is a poor user experience so usually it is only done if the two offers have the same price.