Introductions Duo, or "Why the ??"

Compare Book is a book price comparison tool. And so are about five thousand other websites, give or take. "A crowded market place", you might refer to it as, and you would be right. So what sane corporation would dare launch a new product into such a competitive atmosphere?

When did I ever claim sanity?

There are many reasons we decided to launch a book pricing website; some good, and some perhaps not as good. But if you boil it all down, you end up with one thing: opportunity. Opportunity is the sole reason any decent website, or blog for that matter, is created. If there is no opportunity, then there is no reason to exist. Even the incessantly dull "personal blog" (the modern equivalent to the vacation slide-show), if executed correctly, has an opportunity associated with it: to connect with distant friends, or make connections with total strangers.

And what of the "crowded market place?" Don't forget: those are your words, not mine. But it helps to remember that there is a difference between perceived opportunity and actual opportunity. The price comparison market gives the appearance of being crowded and overworked, however the reality is that this the field is just asking someone to come take it. Here are just a few of reasons why:

1. No Clear Market Leader
A "clear" market leader is someone who owns more market share than his nearest three competitors combined. There are several unique opportunities available when going up against such a Goliath, but that is still a tough road to travel. Lucky for us, no one website has this kind of lead. The top website, CampusI.com generates just over 200,000 visitors per month, followed closely by BookFinder.com at roughly 180,000, and then AllBookStores.com at 170,000. Despite this arena being several years old, the market has still not crowned their king. Opportunity.

2. Lack of Product Saturation
Even though many big-name companies have dipped their toe into this market, including CNet and Google, there is still a remarkably small amount of product saturation: most casual Internet users still have no idea you can search for the lowest price of a given product. Chances are that you, my web-savvy, blog-reading friend, know several price comparison sites, but you are not a typical Internet user. Well over 50% of the Internet surfin' public have never heard of a price comparison site - a fact we desperately seek to change. Opportunity.

3. Completely Stale Marketplace
This is my personal favorite point, which basically boils down to this: our competition stinks. I won't go into specifics now (got to save something for later posts), but the fact is few if any of the other book price comparison sites have updated their content, much less their technology in years. The Internet has moved to a totally new state, and they haven't even packed their bags. RSS, Ajax, blogs - these are the up-and-coming technologies, and as far as I know, there is only one site that employs them - CompareBook (are you suprised?)