opportunity__cost

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Aug 31 2011

Groupon Traffic Decline Nearly 50%

Has Groupon's ship sailed? Well, with its IPO pending, the group-buying leader has seen traffic decline nearly 50% since its peak in the second week of June.

That's according to new Hitwise data based on Web-based traffic, but excluding mobile and app-specific traffic.

"Regardless ... the drop-off in Groupon traffic this summer has been significant," according to Bill Tancer, GM of global research at Hitwise.

During the same time period, rival Living Social saw a 27% increase in visits to its site.

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Oct 8 2010

Groupon Going Wild

$35 for a 60-Minute Acupuncture and Massage Treatment at Elements Total Health Center in South Pasadena ($85 Value)

Sounds like a heaven, right? One of the best rated massage salons (http://www.yelp.com/biz/elements-total-health-center-south-pasadena) in my area and $35 bucks sounds like a steal. What am I thinking of?! Buy!!

Lets do a quick calculus first. Still 2 hours left and there already 650 groupons are sold. Each of them is for exactly 1 hour treatment. Salon works for 61 hours a week. So they have at least one person who is already booked for more than 10 weeks in a row. And this person will get paid not more than $17.50/hour (as Groupon typically takes half of the deal). We are talking about quite an upscale salon ($85/hour is a regular rate, salon is well respected, so my wild guess would be that workers are paid fair enough). Of course, not everybody will come. I think 1/3rd will never bother. But we are still talking about 2 freaking months with 61 hours per week for some poor guy to be paid $17.50/month (and this offer is very generous - I'm assuming that the owner will cover all the maintenance loss out of his own pocket, as he wants to bring more clients - or am I fooling myself?)

So what do you think? Can you enjoy this offer in full or there is some major trap around (and it does not seem to matter much are you being trapped or the vendor)? Someone is getting royally screwed up.

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About Olexandr Prokhorenko

My name is Olexandr Prokhorenko. I am passionate about building products that users *love*.

My LinkedIn profile is www.linkedin.com/in/white.


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