Looking for an easy business idea that could earn you great profits?
Or maybe you already have an affiliate site, but you want to improve it and attract more
users?
Great, because in this video we’ll talk about price comparison websites: why they
are a great way to make money, how they work, and how you can build one yourself.
Ok, let’s start from the basics: What is a price comparison website?
If you’ve ever booked a flight, chances are, you’ve encountered a travel aggregator
– or in other words, a price comparison website.
Sites like SkyScanner, Kayak or Google Flights collect flight information from various airline
companies to give you the best deals on a silver platter.
And it happens not only in the travel industry – the same goes for clothing, snowboards,
electronic devices – even services like riding lessons and SPAs.
It’s pretty clear why people use such websites – to find the best prices or features.
But
how can you profit from building a price aggregator?
Well, there are two main ways to earn money with a price comparison website:
Either through affiliate marketing
or from the ads you run on the site.
Affiliate marketing means that when you sign up to be an affiliate of a specific product,
every time someone buys the product using the link on your website, you get a cut from
what the customer paid.
Some subscription-based services even continue paying you a percentage for several months.
Some price comparison websites also run ads.
The most popular way to do that is through Google AdSense.
How much can you earn from ads?
It depends on your niche, as some advertisers are ready to pay more than others.
The most important factor, however, is the traffic - how many people can you attract
to use your website?
The price aggregator will definitely make your website more useful for people to visit.
So how to start a price comparison website?
First, find your niche.
Will you review the best gaming computers or will you help people buy Christmas gifts
on a budget?
Second, select the specific products or services you want to feature on your website – which
websites could you collect data from?
Third, monetize your website – set up affiliate programs with the products you’ll be featuring
on it – or register for a Google Adsense account if you want to run ads.
Finally, choose your web scraping tool & proxies to start collecting the data.
Wait a minute…
Scraping?
Proxies?
What is that?
It’s no secret that price comparison websites would be no good if they didn’t provide
you with the best deals in the market.
But deals come and go, and prices change every day.
So, if you’re creating a price comparison website, you can’t just collect data about
products once and forget about it.
The data collection process for such sites is massive and requires a constant stream
of fresh information, so web scraping tools and proxy IP servers are crucial for its smooth
functioning.
Web scraping tools help to collect data automatically, without having to copy every single feature
or price by hand.
There are different types of scraping tools, some requiring very little technical knowledge.
We go more in depth about them in our video about scraping product data from Amazon, where
we even show how to use one of these tools.
You’ll find the video linked in the cards and in the description below.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but here at Proxyway, we’re more interested in proxies,
which are indispensable when you need a lot of fresh data on a daily basis.
Web scraping tools will help you extract and update data automatically, but they will often
meet many obstacles.
For example, you might get a CAPTCHA or your IP address might get banned from the website
you’re scraping.
Why does it happen?
Mainly because the websites you’ll be collecting data from may lose sales following an unfavorable
comparison, so they tend to protect their information from web scraping.
Residential proxies can hide your IP address and help you overcome such bans.
And don’t worry, it’s completely legal: many big companies are using web scraping
and proxies.
So what kind of proxies should you choose for your comparison site?
Your proxies need to be fast – sometimes near real-time, – they need to scale well, but also allow
choosing from a large number of locations.
But testing proxies yourself is a tedious job and you won’t find reliable data online
because nobody is doing proper research that this market deserves.
Nobody, but us.
Here at Proxyway, we've just published an extensive research on the best residential
proxy providers.
We do it every year, so you’ll find the most recent research linked in the description
box below.
But if you’re creating a travel aggregation site, we can recommend the best residential
proxies for you here and now.
In addition to evaluating the general proxy features, this year we also tested 8 major
proxy providers for websites like Booking and TripAdvisor.
The result?
According to our research, the best proxy providers for creating a travel aggregation
site are:
Oxylabs because of its great overall performance and a wide variety of locations.
Bright Data also performed very well, and it has the best proxy management tools.
Smartproxy for offering similarly great performance like Oxylabs and Bright Data,
but for a much lower price. Besides the 3 market leaders,
other great choices for you might be: NetNut
GeoSurf
PacketStream
As always, you’ll find the links to the mentioned providers in the description box
below.
And if you’re more interested in scraping sites like Amazon, Aliexpress, Craigslist
or others, read our proxy market research to select the best provider for you.
See you in the next video!