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Great site and even better idea but looking at your public traffic data I am wondering what you mean by 'ramen-profitable', https://www.similarweb.com/website/p

Great site and even better idea but looking at your public traffic data I am wondering what you mean by 'ramen-profitable', https://www.similarweb.com/website/pc-kombo.de https://www.similarweb.com/website/pc-kombo.de However, let's not look into how much you make now but instead how much growth potential this idea has: + One opportunity is to further internationalize the product with more languages and vendors to other countries. Then you should be able to 5x to 10x your revs (but quite some work is involved) I rather see some limitations in the chosen business model (if we talk about making this thing really huge): - Strong dependency to Google and hard to buy traffic since the CAC will be always higher than the affiliate revs - Most affiliate merchants fool you on the affiliate commission (except Amazon and ebay), so prepare for tough negotiations without any possibility to prove generated sales - Low LTV and customer loyalty if any because people configure a PC once every one or two years and in that time they might forget about your site and not using it the next time - In general the market is limited, 10-20yrs ago everybody did configure a desktop/tower, now with all the notebooks, ultrabooks and iPad the demand is way smaller - Content generation and maintenance should be small but it's still there (costs for one content manager should be considered) - And do not forget: this browsing and choosing of the best components is an important piece when building a PC yourself, it's fun, don't know if people would give this away => I would keep it as a pet project which brings some revenue but look for new business models where you can adapt what you learned in this process and improve on mentioned points

onli 10y ago
I see no real traffic data on that page ;) But yes, this is very far from a high traffic website, and the main profit comes from using it as a tool to build recommendations for user asking for them on other sites, like reddit. I agree with all your limitations, even the potential problem with affiliate programs – while the one I work with is generally trustworthy, I indeed observed sales that they never registered. I learned a lot from the site and it was worth it even if that were the end now, lessons I'd take to the next project, but I feel there is still a lot that can be done without going all in and counting on it getting huge.
- noauth 10y ago
  I was development lead for an affiliate program that never launched. One of the requirements was a percentage and threshold to basically hide actions that should have generated revenue for the affiliate. I refused initially but then the customer insisted that this was industry standard. I don't know if my experience is an outlier but it definately happens.

onli 10y ago

I see no real traffic data on that page ;) But yes, this is very far from a high traffic website, and the main profit comes from using it as a tool to build recommendations for user asking for them on other sites, like reddit. I agree with all your limitations, even the potential problem with affiliate programs – while the one I work with is generally trustworthy, I indeed observed sales that they never registered. I learned a lot from the site and it was worth it even if that were the end now, lessons I'd take to the next project, but I feel there is still a lot that can be done without going all in and counting on it getting huge.

noauth 10y ago
I was development lead for an affiliate program that never launched. One of the requirements was a percentage and threshold to basically hide actions that should have generated revenue for the affiliate. I refused initially but then the customer insisted that this was industry standard. I don't know if my experience is an outlier but it definately happens.