No, I’m not talking about dollars, I’m talking about saving the environment.

Yahoo Shopping now has a Green Shopping section (to complement the incredible Yahoo! Green). PriceGrabber has Shop Green. TheFind has TheFind Green. MSN Shopping has Shop Green.

While I’ll let these companies quibble about the size of their carbon footprints, what’s important is that these ‘mini-sites’ can be extremely effective merchandising efforts. The other shopping engines all have green products in their databases. I’d expect to see additional ‘green’ launches in the near future.

P.S. Joe, Yahoo! Green has a link to a Green Gift Guide. You’ve gotta get a more prominent link in there back to Yahoo Green Shopping. Pristine Planet might be a good site, but that should be your link!

A lot of people missed the emails sent by the shopping engines about seasonal rate increases, so here’s a quick summary:

Become.com - no rate increase
Yahoo! Shopping - no rate increase
Google Product Search - free
TheFind - free
Pronto - not holiday related, but there will be some adjustments, both up and down (Nov. 15)
Smarter.com - 20% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 1 - Dec. 31)
Shopzilla - 25% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 12 - Dec. 31)
PriceGrabber - 25% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 1 - Jan. 15)
NexTag - 25% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 1 - Jan. 2)
Shopping.com - 10-25% rate increase depending on category (Nov. 15 - Dec. 31)

TheFind announced today an innovative new advertising unit: Mouse Over Banners. Here’s the press release.

While the other shopping engines struggle to create a loyal user base (partly because they’re incentivized not to - if they are paying for an incoming click, they have to monetize that user with an outgoing click ASAP), TheFind continues to provide a pleasurable shopping experience where consumers can leisurely browse through a ton of products. As opposed to monetizing on a quick CPC exit, TheFind is taking advantage of high CPM rates.

Not sure exactly how this Mouse Over Banner program will play out. Siva’s language in the press release made me think of Adware *cringe*. I really hope merchants are not able to use the Mouse Over Banner as an Adware module; mouse over a Macy’s product and see an ad for Nordstroms. This would be a terrible step in the absolutely wrong direction. I’d much rather see these banners allow merchants to highlight promotional messaging - coupons, sales, special offers, cross-sell, in-store offers, etc. Think of it as an ‘add on’ service that you see on Shopping.com and the rest of the shopping engines.

PayPal and TheFind launch PayPal Shopping - or at least that’s what I’m calling it. The domain for the site isn’t actually paypalshopping.com (some clever entrepreneur owns that one), but actually paypal.thefind.com. The site allows shoppers to see just products from stores that offer PayPal as a payment option.

According to Siva Kumar, CEO of TheFind, “there are 175 million products from 500,000 stores on TheFind, while paypal.thefind.com has 50 million products from 200,000 stores.” Paypal has long offered a directory of shops which accept PayPal, but this new site offers a rich shopping experience as opposed to a list of shops ranked by volume.

There is no revenue split among TheFind and PayPal on the site - TheFind takes whatever it makes through it’s sponsored and graphical ads and PayPal monetizes through its normal transaction fees.

Siva explained that the UI for paypal.thifind.com is slightly different - you can see the PayPal logo/icon in a variety of places - but besides the focus on PayPal only merchants, everything else (the algorithm, for example) is the same.

When asked whether there would be promotion of the site by both parties, Siva declined to give details but hinted that there’s definitely a relationship beyond just launching the site.

While PayPal is obviously a leader in the payments space with “revenues last quarter of $439 million” (Business Week June 18), the company is trying to fend off competition from the likes of Google Checkout which is assimilating everything in it’s path. Google Checkout attracted small businesses, then offered incredible promotions to get consumers to sign up, which led more small businesses to integrate as the user base grew and free Adwords credits were doled out, and it has just snowballed from there. I’ve voiced my concerns - especially around customer ownership - but that’s not stopping 94% of merchants from making a quick buck or 10.

Google Checkout is now well integrated into Google Adwords and Google Base/Google Product Search:

Yahoo! and PayPal are testing a similar concept for Yahoo! Search Marketing:

This new PayPal shopping site shows me that PayPal isn’t going to sit by and just watch Google Checkout have all the fun.

As for TheFind, this shows what a scrappy start up can get done and some of the advantages the company has over shopping comparison engines which don’t crawl the web and therefore have a limited set of merchants. Expect TheFind to strike further partnerships like this with any affinity type program - think credit cards, causes (similar to PriceGrabber’s ShopGreen), schools, etc.

Friendly reminder that I’ll be at eBay Live! speaking on buySAFE’s invitation only luncheon panel on multi-channel e-commerce this Friday. Make sure to RSVP if you want to attend.

Glam Media and TheFind announced a partnership last week in which “Glam will deliver both advertising and content from its Glam Publishers Network to TheFind.com, while TheFind.com gains access to Glam Media’s valuable marketing channels including Glam.com and reach to over 250 publishers in the network such as Marie Claire, Dwell, Nylon, Refinery29, SheFinds and, WeddingSolutions. Today, Glam Media reaches over eight million US unique visitors per month.”

I’m not one for regurgitating press releases, but I like that TheFind has found a niche. Odd saying that female shoppers are a niche, but the big shopping comparison engines - NexTag, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, PriceGrabber, Yahoo! Shopping, etc. - have been everything to everybody for a long time, and I’m not sure that’s an easy idea for shoppers to latch onto. Branding yourself as the biggest or most comprehensive is tough in the age of Amazon, eBay, and Google. I’d much rather hear about the best place for women to search, browse, comment, share, discover and buy.

About a year ago (I think) I told one shopping engine that their focus on technology and comprehensiveness was too much for an ordinary person to get his/her mind around. I recommended that the company go after 1 vertical (dog products, cat products, computer monitors, bbqs, spring dresses, etc.) every couple months. From there, I figured that the engine could acquire loyal users who would eventually discover that the shopping engine wasn’t a one-trick pony.

Women is obviously not really a vertical, but fashion & apparel is, and with the Glam deal - no matter what the implementation turns out to look like - TheFind is taking one high-heeled, well-accessorized, fashionable step towards staking its claim.

TheFind is working with Shopping.com to help monetize. TheFind is displaying 2 sponsored search results from Shopping.com at the top of many shopping search results (similar to the Google Adsense or Yahoo! Search Marketing model). Basically, this means that TheFind is getting a revenue share from Shopping.com for each click on the sponsored results.

Typical revenue share with Shopping.com starts around 60%, but can scale much higher. Assuming an average CPC of just about $0.40 for the price floors for the shopping engines, you can assume that TheFind will make at the minimum, an average of $0.24/click. Actual revenue/click will probably be much higher as I have a feeling that TheFind was able to negotiate above 60% and TheFind is taking the top 2 listings from Shopping.com, which means that merchants paying for those spots are most likely bidding well above the minimum.

TheFind also makes money through affiliate fees, but CPC listings offer a potentially much more lucrative revenue stream as TheFind does not have to rely on the merchant to convert.

Here are two examples of TheFind sponsored listings…the first one normalized, the second one non-normalized:

Search for anything red on TheFind and they will donate $1 per day to Doctors Without Borders (up to $10,000 dollars).

If you haven’t taken a look at TheFind since the launch, make sure to click through. Mouse over a product and click on the ‘closest match’ button. Nice feature. And then of course check out the new color search functionality.

Not sure why 2006 ended up being the year for visual search, but I love what Shopwiki, Become, Smarter, Like, and TheFind have developed.

Related Posts:
ShopWiki - Shop By Color - June 14, 2006
Become Adds Search By Color - October 19, 2006
Smarter Launches Visual Search Beta - October 31, 2006

FatLens has been getting some great press this month. PR hits include Time Magazine (subscription required) and CBS’s San Francisco affiliate which writes, “Currently the search engine is configured to only find event and concert tickets, but Kumar [FatLens co-founder] plans to expand the site in the fall to compete with other online shopping sites.” The company also won the Under the Radar Consumer Technology Innovation award.

Next week I’m meeting with Siva Kumar, co-founder & President of FatLens. I’ll let you know what I learn.