Groupon, a deals site that offers a daily deals on the local goods, services and cultural events in more than 250 markets around the world has announced a national affiliate incentive agreement with eBay .
Visitors to eBay’s Groupon page, will find daily updated deals from Groupon featured throughout the site. Members of the eBay Bucks Rewards Program who purchase Groupon deals from the eBay site earn 5% of the purchase price back in eBay Bucks. Groupon is currently live in more than 100 North American markets and running nearly 200 deals per day; eBay will use geolocation to determine the closest deal for each user.
This is a win-win deal for both companies, giving Groupon access to eBay’s customer base as well as helping eBay create more incentives for its customers to hang around.
Using the principles of collective buying, Groupon negotiates steep discounts with popular businesses and has come out of nowhere to achieve huge growth, with a recent valuation of $1.3 billion for the 2-year old company. Groupon subscribers get free daily emails alerting them to the deals. The deals are activated only when a minimum number of people agree to buy, encouraging subscribers to share the promotion with family and friends. By guaranteeing a large number of new customers, Groupon has created a powerful new marketing vehicle for local merchants. This innovative approach to e-commerce has brought millions of dollars in new revenue to local businesses.
This move is part of eBay’s larger plan to turn its ailing auction site into more of a “one stop shop” for finding deals around the Wweb. Along those lines eBay recently launched a new Deal Finder page which compares the prices of good sold in eBay to others on the Net to find the best deal. In fact, visiting the eBay homepage, you might not realize you were even on an auction site, with a cornucopia of deals and offers being assured to prospective buyers.