Cha-Ching: Microsoft Pays Users to Search with Bing 42 comments
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Starting today, Microsoft (MSFT) plans to actually pay users to search via Bing. Yes, you read that correctly - they will PAY you, in cash, to use Bing rather than some other search engine such as Yahoo (YHOO), or more likely Google (GOOG). How will they do this? When you shop online through the Bing search engine, Microsoft will refund you a portion of your purchase price at its own expense. Okay, they have actually been doing this for a while, but starting today they will double that amount to up to 50% of your purchase price. That’s worth taking notice.
In practice, this concept isn’t entirely new. Many e-commerce sites have affiliate programs which will pay a third party site (like Bing) for referring customers to them. Microsoft’s search engine has taken advantage of this by combining its search engine capabilities with various affiliate programs. When a buyer searches for an item on Bing and then purchases it, Microsoft gets paid a commission for the referral. There are many sites that do this, but Microsoft is the only one that refunds 100% of this commission back to its users. For more on this, read my last article on Microsoft’s Bing.com (formerly Live.com) here. As you can see from the article, Microsoft has dabbled with paying users out of pocket to shop via Bing in the past. Previously, they have offered similar promotional discounts to specific stores like eBay (EBAY). In that instance, users received up to 30-35% cashback for making their eBay purchases through Bing. But with this promotion, they will double the cashback on ALL affiliate stores, up to 50%!
Want to save 50% at FTD Flowers (FTD) or 50% at Footlocker (FL)? You can, but only if you buy their items through Bing. For a full list of stores and the amount of cashback available click here (you can then view ‘all stores’ and sort by cashback value to find those with the largest savings). All amounts listed are doubled for a limited time.
What is really surprising is that Microsoft not only refunds 100% of the affiliate revenue to its users, but for the purposes of this ‘Back to School’ promotion, they will be matching these revenues at their own expense, effectively doubling Bing users’ savings. This was confirmed in a letter sent by Bing to its participating merchants last month. In this letter the stores were assured that the cash handouts would be coming from Microsoft and Microsoft alone.
To many, including me, it would seem crazy, even downright desperate for a company to pay customers to use its service. But in reality, how foolish is it? Many companies spend millions if not billions of dollars in advertising annually; Microsoft is just taking some of this money and handing it out to the masses instead. If Bing cashback is a form of advertising, it is having the desired effect. The Bing brand name was launched this past June and less than one month later, 25% of US adults already recognized the name somewhat. That is a hugely successful brand recognition campaign, even if “to bing” hasn’t quite made it into Webster’s dictionary as a verb yet.
Bing does seem to be gaining in popularity, though they have a long way to go. According to ComScore’s recent rankings, Google still controls 65% of searches to Microsoft’s 8.4% and Yahoo’s 19.6%. While Microsoft did show a slight gain in share, it was at Yahoo’s, rather than Google’s, expense. Another indicator of some success, while the volume of search queries declined for Google and Yahoo, Microsoft saw a 3% increase.
It will be interesting to note how this new promotion combined with the recent Yahoo-Microsoft revenue sharing deal will impact these numbers in the coming months. But the overall question remains, will Bing shoppers be sticky and continue to use the service in the future? That is something of which I’m still not entirely convinced. Regardless, Bing has gotten some great reviews (just search for ‘Bing’ on Seeking Alpha for a slew of articles about the search engine). So why not give it a try and make a little money on the side while doing it? Whether or not the promotion pays off for Microsoft, it will certainly pay off for Bing users.
Disclosures: None
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This article has 42 comments:
I just picked up several rechargeable AA batteries for a little over 50 cents a battery after the Bing discount. Amazing. And I was impressed with the Bing interface and will now use it again (though I haven't given up Google completely yet and don't expect to). I never would have used it had I not seen this article and I bet a lot of others will have similar experiences. BUT Google might come up with something even better in which case I'll drop Bing without a second thought. But for now... I'm thinking its time to buy MSFT.
Very old deal very good deal, Thousands of dollars can be saved, just make sure you needed the stuff in the first place.
as to google coming up with something better? what is better than free money? And can google afford to risk DOJ action if they start to pay users to "not" search on bing?
Let me try and purchase this afternoon and I'll get back atcha.
So I guess comparison shopping is still valid.
Bing does offer comparison shopping as well but yes, don't just assume because there is a big discount, that the original price is a competitive one. But I've searched for a number of products from reputable sites (Barnes and Noble, Overstock, SmartBargains, Buy.com, HP.com, etc.). All their prices seem normal, competitive and most importantly, do not seem to be inflated to coincide with the Bing promotion. No guarantee it will last but if these stores value their reputation, they'll behave.
jyothiprakash.wordpres...
From a usability point of view ... look, I just tried using bing.com, and it's beyond awful. No sort by price button in the Shopping area?
What?
That's just the first thing that jumped out at me; there are others. Like if you're searching in "cash-back" mode, and there's nothing, it'll say there are no results that match that query ... but it won't add "... in cash back mode; click here to perform a regular shopping search". Or, better still, just show regular shopping results and put a notice at the top that says 'no cashback items found'.
You know what they do instead?
You search twice, on the same term, and once it gives you no results and the next time, results, with no explanation.
(the explanation: you've mysteriously left cash-back mode, which you didn't know you were "in" to begin with because it's hidden over on a column on the left, instead of up by the search box where I expect to see the options for the actions I'm taking, namely, searching).
These things are ... are ...
Well, they're things that google and amazon and even ... well... not ebay, so much ... understand about the user experience. Oh, Apple, too.
I know these businesses seem to share some kind of snobby, latte-sipping quality that probably turns off Business Types, but the things that geeks and makers like about these companies are reflections of abilities, built deeply into the companies, to understand the user experience -- which is everything in software.
Bing is:
1. hilariously worse than Amazon as a store
2. tragically worse than Google as a search engine, and
( even paying out of its own pocket ),
3. miserably worse than FatWallet.com at saving me money.
That's an entrepreneur-coder's take on why MS will continue to be dominated in the new software.
It will definitely increase their market share in the short term. And while not all users will be sticky in the long term, at least some will be.
Sure thay canm bribe people to use it to shop on things they will buy anyway, but then, isn't the search function kind of just a gimmick. How do you build a name in search for it when they are treating your portal as a clip out discount coupon?
Why would anyone pay money to read Murdoch crap?
Murdoch you should be paying US to read YOUR content. (Even then i wouldnt read it!)
At the end of the day the public will determine what is better. I use and prefer Google but i have tried Microsoft's Bing and find it "different".
In marketing there is a great phrase that i think applies 'FIRST TO MARKET WINS".
Google will never lose it's position unless they have a technical problem.
By Johnathan Vrozos
johnathanvrozos.com
BTW this is 2nd time they did this. MSFT was offering whooping 20% cashback on eBay buy-it-now purchase last year if clicked thru live.com. It began at 20% and slid to 8% over few months.
My 2-cents is glass is half empty on par with desperation all over it.
There are many sites that do this, but Microsoft is the only one that refunds 100% of this commission back to its users."""""""
The only way you'd get 50% back is if the commission is 25%.
ARE ONLINE MERCHANTS PAYING SEARCH ENGINES 25% FOR SUCKERS?
This is not new. Network marketing companies have been doing this for years. Take your marketing budget and pay someone else to market your product for you. Since it is Microsoft no one is claiming pyramid. Microsoft will laugh all the way to the bank either way because if you are a consumer, you know to read the fine print. Your cash back caps at $2500. After that, you are making commissions for Microsoft. Happy Shopping!
Also if I don't buy anything I save 100%
On Aug 11 08:36 AM Maxe Paul wrote:
> Are you listenning to this Rupert Murdoch?
>
> Why would anyone pay money to read Murdoch crap?
>
> Murdoch you should be paying US to read YOUR content. (Even then
> i wouldnt read it!)
I'm with you !
seekingalpha.com/artic...
Only it was as high as 30-35%, not 20%.
And I agree it is desperate. But desperate measures sometimes work. I don't think Bing will overtake Google by any means but this should increase their market share.
On Aug 11 01:10 PM doubleshortetf wrote:
> Nice ploy but how long can MSFT finance this renewed effort? Can't
> beat GOOG so "bribe" for few clicks? $10k questions is will the
> users continue to use Bing when the cashback is reigned in?
>
> BTW this is 2nd time they did this. MSFT was offering whooping 20%
> cashback on eBay buy-it-now purchase last year if clicked thru live.com.
> It began at 20% and slid to 8% over few months.
>
> My 2-cents is glass is half empty on par with desperation all over
> it.
On Aug 11 06:12 PM Rokjok777 wrote:
> very, very old and stale news, this was launched nearly a year ago
The whole thing reeks of desperation though.
Then again, I wouldn't have bothered trying Bing at all had it not been for this promotion. So desperate or not, it definitely does work.
Go Microsoft!
He is right the deal is very old , it goes up it goes down.
Everything from LIVE went right to bing. No changes nothing. The same cashback , same accounts same records.
Thanks again to MSFT and LIVE/BING giving real cash , for very little effort.
On Aug 12 09:13 AM Boaz Berkowitz wrote:
> Rokjok777, what do you meant this is year-old news? Bing was only
> launched this past June and this particular promotion was only launched
> on August 10, the day the article was published? Please elaborate.
>
>
> On Aug 11 06:12 PM Rokjok777 wrote:
On Aug 11 03:04 AM Dan Katz wrote:
> mriuc: Of course you can sort by price. I think you just haven't
> figured out how to use Bing. There are two ways to access cashback,
> one is through regular search and one is going directly to their
> cashback section (bing.com/cashback). Trying using the search
> there instead. Microsoft aren't idiots and are pretty good at building
> software and websites.
This is an example of a well-known truth from software design that is completely under-appreciated outside of that world: you shouldn't have to *learn* to use search. Shopping, even less so.
It doesn't seem that hard; what's the harm? Could I have figured out how to sort by price? Did I figure out why their search behaved irrationally, returning 0 results one time and many results after performing the action again? Sure.
But these things have very real effects on the users of a website. They're measurable; there are measurably, significantly lower attach rates in applications that get these kinds of "effortless use" things wrong. (See the book "Don't Make Me Think")
Microsoft is *building* share here, so at the moment, their offering is dragging users into bing for the CB whether the users want to go or not.
Compare bing to Amazon.
Compare them to google (search, gmail, maps)
People will prefer Amazon and google after using them and bing -- and they may not even KNOW why!! They'll feel like those companies are 'friendlier', somehow; or they'll feel more productive in those apps. The users have no idea what's going on -- but if you don't trust the research, trust the empirical research of the market.
Microsoft knew how to throw resources into making a WORD PROCESSOR that would have been a revolutionary word processor 20 years ago.
Web software has such a higher standard than anything on the desktop, because your competition can crush you if their product is the tiniest bit better than yours.
In my opinion, Bing is currently a sin against user interface design, and a demonstration that MS has learned very little.
Past promotions have only featured one store. The ebay promotion was great but I didn't really care when the promotion was for Barnes and Noble only or Drugstore.com only. But when it is EVERY store, its got something for everyone. And none of those older promotions ever came close to 50% OFF YOUR PURCHASE! That's pretty exciting. Buy something with a mail in rebate too, and your end price could be free. So yes, this is new and it is big. And it is definitely getting Bing noticed.
On Aug 12 12:47 PM jack dee wrote:
>
> He is right the deal is very old , it goes up it goes down.
>
> Everything from LIVE went right to bing. No changes nothing. The
> same cashback , same accounts same records.
>
> Thanks again to MSFT and LIVE/BING giving real cash , for very little
> effort.