Wabbadabba - wish I’d thought of it
So you launch a new search engine, well a reskin of the Yahoo! search results and call it Wabbadabba. How do you market it and get people to use it? Easy, you pay them. OK you don’t actually pay everybody but you give people the chance to win prizes - just for using your search engine. Not only that, but you encourage those users to sign up their friends, and if they win a prize then so do you. In effect a 2 tier referral scheme, how very simple but very effective.
So how do Wabbadabba fund the prizes? Well as they show Yahoo! sponsored ads then they obviously get a cut of the advertisers CPC. So all they need do is allocate say 50% of their profits for prizes and away you go. As the site gets busier, and more people search/sign up then you can offer bigger and better prizes etc.
There is already a lot of chat about it over on various freebie forums and the buzz certainly seems to be working as there are a lot of people out there recruiting their friends to sign up.
So far it looks like the main prizes are £5 and £10 Amazon vouchers, but I’ve also seen a few iPods so am certain the big screen TV’s won’t be far away. Ben Akin-Smith, head of innovation at Wabbadabba said in an interview that he “looks forward to the day when the company can “drive up to someone’s house with a Porsche Boxster as a prize”. There’s also a blog where you can see some of what happens behind the scenes.
I really love this idea if I’m honest. Like all good ideas its very simple, and I’m sure it will be a hit. Well done guys.
What I’m listening to right now: J Holiday ft Trey Songz – “Bed” (Remix)
Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 11:05 am and is filed under Making Money, Yahoo!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
October 16th, 2007 at 11:21 am
Looks like they’re already giving away a 42″ plasma TV.
But why do so many of these pseudo search engines base themselves on Yahoo? Pay me to use Google and you might have a winner.
October 16th, 2007 at 11:23 am
Interesting… I use Google as my SE of choice through habit mostly but I find myself using Yahoo! more and more as the results are usually more relevant.
Nice find Kieron - just signed up
October 16th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
This post brought back memories. Back in the 1999/2000 timeframe, there was a website called iwon.com that did just this with Google’s search engine. At the time it was owned by CBS. I was one of the first members there and I got quite addicted to trying to win prizes and I actually won a couple. It was fun and a total timewaster. It looks like it is still around but it is VERY different than it used to be. It’s really sad that I know that, but I remember what music I was listening to around that time.
October 16th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Sounds like a clone of Blingo.com which has been operating for over a year that I know of.
October 16th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Personally I don’t like it!
I also thought that Yahoo had a rule about incentivised clicks?
It isn’t really on to spend an advertisers money to fund clickers prize funds and will (IMHO) result in a far lower conversion rate for the advertisers, which lets not forget, fund the whole thing
October 16th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
LB - i really don’t know what you mean. Bingo.com is a site where you can play bingo online, i.e. gamble. Wabbadabba is a search engine thats free.
Duncan I hear what you’re saying, however the Wabbadabba rules say that only 150 searches a day are eligible for entry in the draw. Plus, I don’t think that “normal” uses really know which are paid results and which aren’t. Also, here’s part of their rules:
“Don’t overdo it! Only the first 150 searches per person in a 24 hour period qualify for a prize, so just use wabbadabba like any other search engine and you might win a prize for doing what you normally do.
Random clicking does not help! Clicking links does not help. The results are provided by Yahoo, we hope you will find them useful as they are related to your search query, but clicking on them will not increase your chances of winning.”
October 16th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Kieron - read my comment again - there’s an L in the name too
October 16th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Ah, sorry LB I see its Blingo not Bingo, lol. TBH I think there are a few incentivised search engines out there, but Wabbadabba looks the best of the latest ones. Plus its UK focused.
October 16th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Hi guys - I’m from Wabbadabba, thanks for the kind write up - if anyone has any questions about the site - drop me an email and I will try my best to answer - but no, I won’t tell you when we’re about to give out an iPod.
In response to Duncan Popham’s comment about incentivising clicks, it is a good point, however to win on Wabbadabba you do not need to click on any links, if you are lucky enough to win as soon as you hit the search button you will be told “you have won” (see the site for more details). Clicking on the sponsored links will not have any impact on your chances of winning. We have tried to design the site to encourage people to use it as they would any other search engine.
We just thought that if we can create a place where you can have a bit of fun while you search - it might just make someone smile - and that can’t be bad thing!
thanks again
Ben
October 17th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
It’s a nice looking site but there’s very little innovation here IMO.
It’s very similar to the “charity” search engines that sprung up a couple of years back and I’ve seen at least one “carbon neutral” search engine knocking about as well.
The reason why they tend to use non google results is that Google normally pay less per click than the competition. But I suppose if they’re not encouraging clicks then it shouldn’t really matter, should it?
October 18th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
I wonder if this would work with google hmm…