The next passive income opportunity we will look at is a price comparison website. When you think of price comparison websites depending on what country you live in you will have heard of popular sites that advertise and offer the consumer the chance to compare prices from a variety of sources so the consumer can get the best deal.
Some Price Comparison website examples
Gocompare – is a site that offers comparison of many insurance products and advertises heavily in the UK
Trivago – a site that allow you to search various hotels to find the best deal
moneysupermarket – a huge player that has credit cards, loans, insurance and much more
OK, that is some examples of popular price comparison sites but how do they make money – that is why you want to create one, right
These sites make money by offering a variety of products or services and the sites take a commission of the sales – so in many cases all of the listings they show will pay them. That is correct basically this is a form of affiltae website selling products but they do offer some content and guides as well to make the consumer make the best choice.
Now the sites I mentioned earlier are huge players, you could make a dent in the hotels, insurance, credit card markets but it is unlikely, what you need to do is find a niche with a decent amount of products and focus on it. Now, you need to create some useful content as well, maybe some articles, tutorials, how -tos and guides. You should also create multimedia like photos and videos to promote products if you can.
Lets look at an example, you may want to look at 3d printers as a niche – you could write an article on what to look for in a 3d printer, costs of 3d printers, 3d printer materials. You can then have a price comparison page of a 3d printer model.
You should have a comparison table which lists all the products and you should list the key features and rate these features so customers can see these side by side. the features could be cost, speed in fact it could be just about anything that a customer may be interested in with regards the products.
Now a site like this will take time to setup, you need to find a good modern design which should be clear and easy to navigate. If you have minimal money then wordpress and a price comparison theme or plugin would do for starters unless you are skilled at design or can afford a freelancer.
Traffic is key for a site like this – you should use all social media like Youtube, Facebook, twitter, pinterest and instagram. Lets take the 3d printer example, how about a video review pointing to your price comparison site on youtube, tweet about the product on twitter or an article (even the video), pin an image to pinterest or instagram. The key to these sites is traffic – employ all the methods you can find to drive people to your site.
This site is a great passive income opportunity – better than an affiliate website but it takes more time to setup and long term you will spend more time on this than say a niche website
You should also keep an eye on trends – imagine you got in when home automation started becoming popular and put up the first comparison site
Summary
Pick a topic you know about – this will come across when the product features are rated and in the content you produce. Visitors will trust your opinion more as they will believe you know what you are talking about
Keep the products up to date – no-one really wants to look at a 10 year old product
Focus on keywords with low competition – dominate these and get the traffic in.