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PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

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Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#51

Post by Flenser »

sturgill wrote: post #47
bowmessage wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are online retailers ok with this? Surely this violates referral kickback ToS or something? Doesn't seem fair to not pay the _real_ referrer that leads to a purchase.

Rewards and coupon websites are notorious for leaching off the affiliate process without driving much incremental revenue. In the heyday of ABestWeb.com they coined the phrase ParasiteWare for places that stuff cookies like this. The overall affiliate channel has become increasingly challenging to manage profitably from a merchant perspective. But it’s very easy for a “manager” to see all of the sales affiliates “dri…

What about services like revlifter[1] where you put their script on your basket page and they give customers offers based on their basket contents?

[1] https://revlifter.com

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#52

Post by hnburnsy »

If you use Edge on Android, Honey is a built in extension, but not enabled. Go to settings then coupons to see it lurking there. Thought it was weird that Microsoft would partner with such a weird company. Having a deal with Microsoft may have given them Street cred.

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#53

Post by gonesilent »

hnburnsy wrote: post #52

If you use Edge on Android, Honey is a built in extension, but not enabled. Go to settings then coupons to see it lurking there. Thought it was weird that Microsoft would partner with such a weird company. Having a deal with Microsoft may have given them Street cred.

Looks like pay to play worked for them.

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#54

Post by gonesilent »

twostorytower wrote: post #48
Bootwizard wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but HOW does it make money?

I believe they’re an affiliate of many of the popular shopping sites. So they get a cut of any sales they help drive.

Nope, it got kicked out of most of them. It makes money by retailers paying them to push deals.

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#56

Post by [deleted] »

kart23 wrote: post #17
danShumway wrote: post #12

How does Honey make money, aside from the obvious data collection? I know a few people who use it, and I've cautioned them in the past that I can't think of any savory business model that would make this profitable. Is there one? Is it just tracking purchases for advertisers, or is there some other monetization strategy I'm missing? Their main site says they make commissions, but I don't know how to square that with…

I think honey by itself probably doesn't make much if anything. Integrated with PayPal however has the potential to become a big earner in terms of fees and new customers.

[deleted]

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#57

Post by danShumway »

kevindong wrote: post #22
danShumway wrote: post #12

How does Honey make money, aside from the obvious data collection? I know a few people who use it, and I've cautioned them in the past that I can't think of any savory business model that would make this profitable. Is there one? Is it just tracking purchases for advertisers, or is there some other monetization strategy I'm missing? Their main site says they make commissions, but I don't know how to square that with…

Major retailers typically have affiliate programs in which if an affiliate (say Honey) refers a customer to the retailer and the customer then makes a purchase, then the retailer will pay out a commission to the affiliate. This model is substantially similar to RetailMeNot, except Honey will automatically try every coupon they know of for you automatically.

But when does Honey ever refer a customer to a product? My impression is that you only ever use Honey when you're already about to make a sale -- you go to the product page, and Honey finds a discount for you.

I'm not super familiar, does Honey run any advertisements or recommendations for products? It makes sense why I might pay a blogger affiliate revenue for referring a reader to my product, but I'm not going to pay someone an affiliate link to someone who claims they influenced a purchase decision where the customer is already sitting on the checkout page. If I go to an Amazon product page, will Honey give me a recommendation for a different product that's lower priced?

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#58

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #44
graphememes wrote: post #14

I thought honey was a pure scam, it's not?

I was in the same boat. The few ads that got past my adblocker indicated the site was borderline porn-scammy. I stayed as far as I could away. They feel similar as "Wish". Just as terrible. Don't trust them.

They take referral links when you go to Amazon and in exchange they just try multiple coupon codes.

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#59

Post by treebornfrog »

Flenser wrote: post #51
sturgill wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rewards and coupon websites are notorious for leaching off the affiliate process without driving much incremental revenue. In the heyday of ABestWeb.com they coined the phrase ParasiteWare for places that stuff cookies like this. The overall affiliate channel has become increasingly challenging to manage profitably from a merchant perspective. But it’s very easy for a “manager” to see all of the sales affiliates “dri…

What about services like revlifter[1] where you put their script on your basket page and they give customers offers based on their basket contents? [1] https://revlifter.com

This seems very similar to yieldify.com

Re: PayPal to acquire shopping and rewards platform Honey for $4B

#60

Post by Coryodaniel »

danShumway wrote: post #12

How does Honey make money, aside from the obvious data collection? I know a few people who use it, and I've cautioned them in the past that I can't think of any savory business model that would make this profitable. Is there one? Is it just tracking purchases for advertisers, or is there some other monetization strategy I'm missing? Their main site says they make commissions, but I don't know how to square that with…

Last click attribution, baby. Get those affiliate fees for 30 days after click on some sites.

I worked on a competing product some years back there is much money to be had in the deal/affiliate/coupon space.

Our biggest mistake was going hard on SEO. We got the google rug pulled out from under us and quickly burned all of our capital trying to do click arbitrage.

Going after browser installs is a pretty ~sneaky~ savvy way to keep a user base.

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