Damn, this is exactly what I've been looking for for the last year. Any alternatives?
im working on https://percht.com (it's still early)
looking good so far, will be checking on your progress!
PriceZombie is shutting down
61–70 of 219 posts
Re: PriceZombie is shutting down
#62The issue here wasn't that they were just using Amazon's API and then lost access. The Amazon TOS says don't store and display our old prices and, per the post, that's what PriceZombie was doing. The lesson is that if you're doing something in violation of a partner's TOS and start to negatively effect their business, the partner is well within their rights to cut off access. Whether other businesses have or haven't…
The Amazon TOS says don't store and display our old prices How is Amazon fine with CamelCamelCamel [1] then? It seems like they make money off Amazon affiliate links too. [1] http://camelcamelcamel.com/blog/how-our-price-checking-syste...
They probably just haven't been caught yet. Amazon is massive and has tons of people who use their Affiliate API. There's probably a small enforcement team that looks at stuff like this. Price Zombie might have just gotten large enough to show up on their radar.
Re: PriceZombie is shutting down
#63If your objective is to write a crawler that parses pricing information from a third party web site, then write the crawler. Relying on the third party to provide a consistent API that can be remotely communicated with is setting yourself up for failure. These companies can quickly ban you from their platform when using their API. At least by writing the crawler yourself, you're making it much more difficult for them…
I don't think that would have mattered here. They were generating revenue from the Affiliate API. Even if they made a scraper and used that for price data instead, they're still violating the TOS for the Affiliate program. It wouldn't matter how they go the data.
Re: PriceZombie is shutting down
#64Here in Austria, Amazon pays the major price comparison website to be listed: www.geizhals.at And I hear it's not cheap for them.
It works in Austria because of how many people use Geizhals: basically everybody in certain categories who is a regular shopper. They have a huge reach.
Re: PriceZombie is shutting down
#65If your objective is to write a crawler that parses pricing information from a third party web site, then write the crawler. Relying on the third party to provide a consistent API that can be remotely communicated with is setting yourself up for failure. These companies can quickly ban you from their platform when using their API. At least by writing the crawler yourself, you're making it much more difficult for them…
> building a business model around the availability of a third party is a recipe for failure.
Rather, I think it's that a business model that is not complimentary to the third party is the problem. E.g. Amazon doesn't want historical price tracking for as it could lead to folks discovering price manipulations and a decrease in margins. So, that's the issue--the business was not a compliment. Let's imagine a startup that was generating new sales from a long tail market segment too small for Amazon to target directly, then that's a good business model as it compliments Amazon and leads to new sales they wouldn't otherwise see.
TLDR if you rely on a partner, make sure your business helps their business.
Re: PriceZombie is shutting down
#66It is against Amazon's interests to have price comparison these days. Early on in my computer shopping days I'd hit pricewatch and buy from random vendors based on price. Eventually this company called Newegg often had the near the lowest price always and had great service. I soon went to shopping at Newegg consistently without bothering to go to pricewatch. Newegg could have raised prices slightly but I did not want…
I recently did a fresh computer build for the first time since 2005. I was use to using PriceWatch for parts and buying from smaller stores. I've actually been out of the country for four years, and upon my return, I see most of the small shops are gone. The lowest prices seem to always be Newegg, Amazon, SuperBizz and Microcenter. They've pretty much squished out a lot of the market, and it seems like Newegg allows other vendors to sell through it just like Amazon.
It's kinda sad really. The last city I lived in still had computer stores. The one I moved to doesn't...at all. There are some recycled PC stores, but the only new parts store is a Frys way out of the city. Fuck Frys too.
Re: PriceZombie is shutting down
#67name.toLower().contains("zombie") -> FAIL you FAIL
Saying fail is a lowercase fail.
Saying fail with code is an uppercase FAIL.
Re: PriceZombie is shutting down
#68Feel bad for them really. But this is a classic example of the risk you undertake running a business where you core depends on a third party. It is astonishing that they lost 90% of their business just due to amazon closing their affiliate account.
I saw a girls startup plan that involved exclusively using Facebook. I was like, "You really need to support Flickr, Twitter. You shouldn't depend on one source for your customers to pull photos." She said they were just going Facebook because it was the quickest route to get a deliverable product. She obviously wasn't an engineer and I'm sure any software dev will tell you if you support at least two services, you'll write code in such a way that's expandable to many (more modular, classes for each service type). Even if that 2nd service may not have any customer base, it's worth the implementation cost just to have.
This doesn't really relate to this story as Price Zombie did utilize many different sites, but it does show just how big the giants are (like Facebook/Amazon) that even if you try to support lots of different sources, one of them can make or break you.
Re: PriceZombie is shutting down
#69The issue here wasn't that they were just using Amazon's API and then lost access. The Amazon TOS says don't store and display our old prices and, per the post, that's what PriceZombie was doing. The lesson is that if you're doing something in violation of a partner's TOS and start to negatively effect their business, the partner is well within their rights to cut off access. Whether other businesses have or haven't…
That's not the lesson at all. Even if you follow the TOS those terms can change overnight and your business will die in the same way. If you are 100% reliant on another company you're entire existence depends on that relationship.
Every business is 100% on other companies. Everyone uses electricity, has to ship product, buy resources, use devices to transform those resources etc.
The problem here only really exists in these silly other parasitical web-only businesses. Yes, if you track Amazon's prices and Amazon makes that harder then you'll be on trouble. So probably best to set up 20 or so companies/services in your spare time and not take any of them too seriously.
Re: PriceZombie is shutting down
#70Our appeals to Amazon affiliate program administrators (associates@amazon.com) and even Jeff Bezos (jeff@amazon.com) were either ignored or answered incompletely, leaving us wondering if anyone was listening I was once in a room with Dave McClure and a ~50ish companies he had funded. He announced that he was taking a tour of partnership teams at two members of AppAmaGooBookSoft and asked for who wanted to come with.…
I'd strongly urge that in Amazon's case this advice is functionally irrelevant as they aren't a reliable business partner that reacts in a consistent way when it comes to MWS operations regardless of who you know that works there unless its Bezos himself.
Exactly. I also deal with Amazon on a seller's platform and can confirm this. It doesn't matter who you know, the company itself is bipolar and unreliable.