SingleFeed has launched! SingleFeed is an online self-service data feed management, submission, and optimization company. No matter what level of experience you have with data feeds, we can save you time and money working with the shopping comparison engines. Learn to love your feed. SingleFeed.

I started ComparisonEngines with no business plan in mind. I wanted to blog and after using the shopping comparison engines, I thought the shopping comparison engine industry would be a great topic. Less than a month after starting the site, with the help of an acquisition or 2, traffic took off. While I’m not divulging unique user numbers, I’m now generating around 300,000 unique page views per month (and growing). At this point, I could probably put up advertising on the site and make a living…spend more time blogging…and make a better living. However, the majority of ads you see on blogs are from Google Adsense and Yahoo! Publisher Network, and I think making a living off of Google and Yahoo! would be a poor standard as I want to objectively write about both Froogle/Google Base and Yahoo! Shopping. Yes, there are other solutions (join someone’s blog network, sell advertising, etc.)…and yes, I think my audience now trusts me enough not to be biased, but I like the idea of maintaining my independence. I don’t ever want it to even cross anyone’s mind that I wrote something positive about engine X because engine X paid me.

That said, I have gone back and forth over the last year whether or not I should even accept meals from shopping comparison engines (call me naive, but I’m being totally serious). In the end, I view a meal as a great way to get to know people better and build a relationship. A meal is not going to get a company ‘covered’ in ComparisonEngines.com. An innovative concept or compelling story might.

But even breakfast, lunch, and dinner Monday - Friday isn’t enough to live on. It’s time to develop a real business!

For about 9 months, I’ve dabbled with the idea of developing a data feed creation, management and submission business. I think ChannelAdvisor, Channel Intelligence, Performics, and many other companies provide incredible services, and I completely respect the work they do. I will continue to support these companies (and others) and send potential clients their way. However, these companies are set up to work with merchants who can afford a $1000 set up fee and a commission on the back-end (those are just sample numbers, contact the companies for exact rates). At the same time, there are 10s of thousands of small to medium sized businesses that I think could benefit from a self-service data feed creation, management, and submission solution. Something simple, inexpensive, and smart.

The channel management companies of the world could develop such a solution at any point, but I don’t see them going down-market in the near future. Their businesses are set up to make money from clients paying them $1,000, $5,000, or even 10,000+/month for a variety of services, not $89/month for one service. I’ve been open and honest with all the channel managment companies and for the most part these companies see me as a potential partner more than anything else.

So I’m moving forward with a new venture. In July, I’ll launch a private test version of a simple data feed creation, management, and submission service. My goals in doing so are to:

1) Assist merchants in getting up and running as quickly and efficiently as possible on multiple shopping comparison engines. Merchants will always have to spend time developing a feed, but I want to shift the majority of time spent on feeds away from creation/submission and towards opimization. I want merchants to learn to love their feeds.
2) Submit the perfect feed to each shopping comparison engine in order to cut down on the customer service resources needed to manage small business accounts. Small businesses are not always easy to deal with, and I’m sure most shopping comparison engines would rather dedicate resources towards helping a merchant get to the next level than helping a merchant (for the 3rd time) figure out why 65 out of 92 products aren’t listed in the right category.
3) Promote the concept of data feed optimization (DFO). Creating, managing, and submitting acceptable data feeds is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s an incredible opportunity to educate and inform 10s of thousands of merchants how to succeed on the shopping comparison engines. Right now there are too many merchants who put up a feed and expect a 1300% ROI without doing any work. This is not how it works on the search engines and this is not how it works on the shopping comparison engines. By the way, DFO is nothing new. All channel management companies talk about it: Channel Intelligence through SellCast, Performics through FeedLab, etc.

I’ve thought a lot about how this new venture changes my relationship with the shopping comparison engines and my audience at ComparisonEngines. There are potential conflicts of interest, but after a year in the industry, I think I’ve built up enough credibility to effectively traverse a potentially slippery slope. And I trust that the shopping comparison engines feel the same way. In other words, I don’t expect any change in my coverage on ComparisonEngines. My goal is still to help you better understand the shopping comparison engine industry from a variety of angles.

As I get closer to launch, I’ll share more of the details of the new business….although I will also start a separate blog/vlog for issues more directly related to data feeds. Finally, I’m looking for merchants to poke holes (test) the service for a month before officially launching.

If you have any questions or are a merchant that is interested in testing the new service, please contact me anytime.

Thanks!

-brian