{"id":302,"date":"2010-11-10T16:10:14","date_gmt":"2010-11-10T20:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.payne.org\/?p=302"},"modified":"2010-11-10T16:10:14","modified_gmt":"2010-11-10T20:10:14","slug":"how-many-groupons-can-we-stand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/how-many-groupons-can-we-stand\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many Groupons Can We Stand?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.groupon.com\/\">Groupon<\/a>, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/One_deal_a_day\">deal-of-the-day<\/a> company, certainly left a trail of salivating investors from their last round of funding. \u00a0Now, it&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/news\/2010-11-08\/groupon-said-to-seek-funding-valuing-it-at-3-billion.html\">rumored that they&#8217;re seeking funding<\/a> at a valuation around $3 billion.<\/p>\n<p>First, congratulations\u00a0to them: \u00a0they&#8217;ve built a real business with real revenues, and created a whole new category in the market. \u00a0That is a real accomplishment.<\/p>\n<p>But, this is now bordering on crazy. \u00a0It reminds me of the early days of email marketing, when marketers were paying $0.15 (yes, 15 <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">cents<\/span>) per email. \u00a0It was a new medium, so nobody knew how to price it. \u00a0And, in those early days, it actually worked well.<\/p>\n<p>Then email fatigue set in with customers, and effectiveness dropped. \u00a0Some high-flying, fast-growing email marketing companies saw revenues stall, then drop steeply.<\/p>\n<p>I think the same thing happens with the deal-of-the-day category. \u00a0 As more offers become available from various companies, effectiveness fades and fatigue sets in.<\/p>\n<p>Also, some existing content sites are much better positioned to offer daily deals as a feature, not as the premise for the entire company. \u00a0For example, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/yelps-first-daily-deal-beats-groupon-2010-9\">Yelp&#8217;s first deal of the day in San Francisco reportedly went quite well<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I wish Groupon (and clones) the best, but at a $3b valuation, I want to go short.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Groupon, the deal-of-the-day company, certainly left a trail of salivating investors from their last round of funding. \u00a0Now, it&#8217;s rumored that they&#8217;re seeking funding at a valuation around $3 billion. First, congratulations\u00a0to them: \u00a0they&#8217;ve built a real business with real &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/how-many-groupons-can-we-stand\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entrepreneurship","category-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}