Recently I have come across another Australian bargain sharing website as it was advertised here via Google AdWords — Fobo.com.au. According to its About page,

Fobo is the leading Social Bargain Sharing website for Australian consumers. Based on the idea of community bargain sharing, our users can not only share and recommend bargains but also vote for them. The most voted bargains automatically come on top in the process. The website is built on the latest Web 2.0 platform.

Gee. Latest Web 2.0 platform — that is quite a mouthful of jargon. When you look right into its HTML source, the very “Web 2.0 platform” that powers Fobo.com.au is none other than the open-sourced Pligg CMS. Moreover, Fobo’s theme certainly looks very similar to Dealigg, another popular Pligg-powered bargain sharing site in US — just check the screenshots!

I guess I better make a disclaimer here — this review on Fobo.com.au will be completely biased as this yet-another social bargain site is a direct competitor to the community site of this blog, OzBargain.com.au. So sorry about dissecting and criticising this website! There are other reasons which I will reveal later.

Social Sharing Website, But No Community

With any social bargain sharing website, you need (1) bargains, and (2) community. Just browsing through the first three pages of deals, majority, if not all of them, are posted by “god”, the admin user of Pligg CMS. I guess that means I can cross out the “community” bit.

It could have been because the site is new, as the site was only publicised in June and the ABN associated with its .com.au account has also only been as recent as April. Or it could have been excessive amount of spamming, as it says in the about page:

Unfortunately, due to spamming, we had to stop user submissions and currently evaluating other strategies.

Hmm. That is fine by me. Out of 8 months of existence, OzBargain too also has a tiny spamming issue when I trialled anonymous commenting for a few weeks back in April. However, I terminated the trial not because of the spams as Akismet caught most of them, but the natural of anonymity caused some irresponsible comments being written — but that is another story.

I am just wondering that how you can be a “leading” social sharing site without a community. I wonder.

Bargain Website, But No Real Bargains

What about the bargains? There are certainly no short of product listing on Fobo.com.au, from many major bargain online stores — Deals Direct, BIGshop, OO.com.au and more. The format is consistent across the board — a product image, a short description, a crossed-out RRP and your bargain price. Take this Canon DC100 DVD Cam from Quikshop Australia for example:

They do have some genuine coupons though. For example this OO.com.au free delivery coupon, which has expired last month. And this 10% off Deals Direct coupon which is OZBARGAIN — I wonder where they got this from (which has also expired 2 weeks ago by the way).

Since it is a site with full of product listings, you would think that it should take you directly to the merchant’s product page, right? Well, only after a few hops.

Take the Canon DVD Cam example we had previously. When you hover your mouse cursor over the link, your browser tells you that the destination URL is

http://www.fobo.com.au/out.php?id=144

Basically it takes another request to Fobo.com.au before it returns you the real landing URL. Many websites hide their out-bound URL for various reasons, and in fact we hide that as well at OzBargain — so we can track how many times a deal is clicked (but we display the full destination URL using title HTML attribute). Another reason for hiding the URL is because you do not want people to know it, as though your visitors will not click through if they know where they are about to go.

Let us see where Fodo.com.au brings us to. I am an old un*x guy so I called up my friend cURL to check it out for me.

$ curl -I http://www.fobo.com.au/out.php?id=144
HTTP/1.1 301
Connection: close
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 07:45:14 GMT
Location: http://www.clixGalore.com/PSale.aspx?BID=48294&...
Content-Type: text/html
Server: Apache/2.0.54 (Unix) ...
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.2
Vary: Accept-Encoding

Instead of sending us to Quikshop, I am sent to an affiliation link at clixGalore instead, who will pay the affiliate 8% commission if I happen to buy from Quikshop. Unlike going through moneyback networks like MoneyBackCo, Buckscoop or Cashloop, I get none of that 8% back.

Yeah. Where is the bargain?

Summary

So what good is Fobo.com.au, a self-claimed “leading social bargain sharing website” with no community nor bargain? Not much to the Australian bargain hunting community I am afraid. It is yet another affiliate website populated with product datafeed, but trying to hide under that “Web 2.0” umbrella.

As I have previously stated, there is nothing wrong to make affiliation as your business model — it’s one of the top reason for running a bargain website so you get rewarded when people shop through your site. They are part of the economy of the web (an unfortunate necessary evil I am afraid), but they pass on little if any saving to the consumers.

But It Is Not The Whole Story…

This post has actually been sitting on my draft tray for more than three weeks! I have a complicated feeling towards this site and was hesitated to finalise what I am about to write — not that I have anything to do with it (other than I have just written a short review), but what it has to do with other bargain websites in Australia.

Who is Running Fobo.com.au?

First of all, I thought it would be nice to find out who runs Fobo.com.au. There are various ways to get hints, but I went to the mighty Google first. It got me to this discussion thread on Whirlpool Forums, where someone is asking for feedback on a site that he is working on.

Hey, isn’t that the same guy who called MoneyBackCo a “scam” at Whirlpool a few days earlier in this post?

By the way for the uninformed who happened to see this review on Fobo.com.au — MoneyBackCo is a moneyback/reward community for the Australians, who gives back 100% affiliation commission to its members (but charge $10/year membership fee). Moreover it is in partnership with OzBargain to bring more savings to Australian online shoppers. Scam? Far from it! Thanks to Neil from Metroblogging Melbourne in our defence. Big thanks for that.

More Defamation

Now, let us turn the clock back another month or two, and read this particular thread on Whirlpool where “Aussie Deals/Bargain Websites” were discussed. You will see the same guy has not only bad mouthed OzBargain but also our friends at Buckscoop (whom I reviewed here). Well, I do not deny that Buckscoop is a competitor to OzBargain/MoneyBackCo as it too focused on cashback rewards and bargain hunting discussions, but they compete by giving back more to the consumers — they have my full respect! Unlike someone who compete by defaming the competitors on public forums.

He did have some interesting points in his comments.

The website has to be user driven and not advertiser driven and if you see any affiliate code in the outgoing links — stay away from that website.^#

I guess he did not anticipate that he would create an affiliation-links filled “bargain sharing” site one month down the track. He then went on attacking Buckscoop for using affiliation links which I rebuked here, but later on he changed his tone in a reply to Buckscoop.

You know my problem is that we all know that there is nothing wrong with affiliate links but when you try to come across as someone who doesn’t do affiliate links until you are proved wrong, this really pisses me off big time.^#

Is he talking about himself?

After all the moneyback sites do not negotiate rates with the merchants individually, but all have to go through affiliation networks like clixGalore, CommissionMonster and DGM to rebate back to you the commissions they have collected. Affiliation links on a moneyback site is working for you the consumers so transactions can be tracked, data can be matched and the rewards can be issued. It is only of no use if you cannot get any commission back.

He then concluded,

Conclusion from a bargain hunter perspective: The chances of finding a genuine bargain on OZbargains and Topbargains are higher than buckscoop as their selection and promotion of bargains doesn’t involve any commissions.^#

I agree that when you are more independent, you are less compelled to push the products from merchants you are affiliating with. However by observing Buckscoop’s forums, I do not see his call justified. There are deals posted by many different individuals on many different shops, many are not part of any affiliation network at all. You do not need to set up something to directly profit from it — just think about why Buckscoop bothered to have a bargain forum, and why OzBargain bothered to team up with MoneyBackCo whom we get no commission from…

What about TopBargains.com.au?

But he did brought up another site here, TopBargains.com.au, which I had a quick look 3 months ago. If you think Fobo.com.au claiming to be the “leading social bargain sharing website” is a bit over the top, you gotta check out TopBargains’ claim!

Australia’s largest Social Bargain Sharing network where real people recommend and rate bargains!

For the benefit of doubt, we just assume that they have done the statistics and have carefully worked out that they really are the largest. Google PageRank of 0 and Alexa Ranking 3 month average of only 690,000+ must be totally inaccurate! It does have an interesting policy on affiliation links though. Extracted from their about page:

Q. Can I use affiliate links or tracking code in my story links?

Yes. We have no issue with that as long as it’s a geniune bargain and can help our site users. Majority of the links on internet are anyways affiliate links and we don’t mind if you also make some money by referring bargain products. Some of our regular users do make money by referring good products. We strongly recommend ClixGalore for affiliate account signups.

There is an affiliation link right there on the word clixGalore! See how they have walked the talk?! I wondered who runs TopBargains as it has been mentioned so many times in that Whirlpool thread.

Compare the WHOIS records for Fobo.com.au and TopBargains.com.au, and tell me what do you think. Now I wonder why these Whirlpool posts aren’t deleted as they are promoting poster’s own business.

Epilogue

There are more I can write about this guy and his websites but I think I shall just stop here. These really add nothing to the Australian bargain hunting community, and sorry to those who have read through the whole thing — this article has zero tips on getting a bargain.

This post is not just written for the consumers out there so that they can stay away from Fobo.com.au. This is mainly written for my bargain-website-running friends. For Buckscoop, for MoneyBackCo and for others who might have their reputation damaged by incorrect information posted on public forums. You might argue that I am fighting fire with fire, but if you are the one who got involved, will you let all these non-sense keep on going?

Lessons to all young Internet entrepreneur-wannabe (although I am not young nor an entrepreneur)

• Work hard to create a functional platform.
• Work hard to populate your site with content.
• Work hard to earn the search engine love.
• Work hard to build a long running community.
• Don’t take short-cuts by bad-mouthing your competitors!