Bringing It All Back Home
By Joe Vierra
One early business model for making money on
the Web sprang up out of a race to become the Consumer Reports for the Web.
There were a number of early runners, including Consumer World, Product ReviewNet
and CompareNet. Knowing that time-to-market, branding, and current and accurate
product information were critical to success, the cofounders of CompareNet--Trevor
Traina and John Dunning--set out to position their site as the place to
go to shop on the Web. The initial idea was born way back in 1995 when Traina
wanted to buy a cordless phone and found there was no good source of compiled
information available--at least not digitally. Two rounds of venture funding
later, the company has grown from two employees to more than 35. The site,
housed on Intel-based servers, now has a database of over 30,000 products,
and receives an average of 2 million hits per day from 60,000 unique user
sessions.
At the outset, Traina and Dunning understood their shortcomings and decided
to stick to their core competencies--marketing and content development. They
saved money by outsourcing the capital-intensive Web hosting and development
functions to Internet Business Solutions (IBS).
This worked well in the early stages. CompareNet emerged after a beta test
of six months with a business model that included four sources of income: manufacturer
sponsorships, banner advertising, selling research information, and commissions
from forwarding customers to online retailers.
