Jellyfish Smack: How Low Can You Watch Prices Fall?
Marshall Kirkpatrick
35 comments »
Though I find it a little bit frightening and bizarre, I’m watching right now a new reverse auction at Jellyfish.com. The company’s standard practice is that it returns part of its revenues from sales performed through CPA advertising on its site. We reported on $5 million in funding for the company late last month. Now they have launched a feature they call the Jellyfish Smack of the Day.
Here’s how it works: an undisclosed quantity of a particular item (today it’s an 80 gigabyte Video iPod) will be put up for auction, starting at its regular price and falling in price every few seconds. Users watch the price fall, torn between letting it fall lower and buying the item at the current price before the mystery quantity is sold out. There’s a forum for real time communication and the psychology sounds just nuts.
On the first day the event was held, 10 people got Apple 2GB iPod Nanos for free. On Friday 50 SD-P1700 Portable DVD Players were sold in the Smack, some for as low at $60. Thursday’s PowerShot SD450 Digital Camera never fell below $100.
Affiliate revenue sharing, real time chat, crowd shopping - sounds pretty 2.0, doesn’t it? Or perhaps it just sounds like fun. As I post this, the iPods are at $310, the forum is hopping and no one knows how many are left.
The company plans on holding the Daily Smack reverse auctions every Monday through Friday. If you find yourself in psychological shambles by the end of the week, here’s a link to the National Council on Problem Gambling. I’ll see you at Jellyfish though.
Update: It looks like the iPods sold out for right about $200, down from a starting price of $350. The forum was quite active towards the end, sociology and psychology students would have had a great time. See also Woot, a site that sells a single item for a low price every day (and was repeatedly derided in the Jellyfish Smack forum) and ZeeDive, a site with a different model we reviewed here.
Marshall, looks like you are driving some substancial traffic to a parked domain with JellyFish misspelling. You have 3 ls in the first link
Janusz, thanks - I really just wanted to make sure I got a cheap iPod. ha ha, kidding.
Have they fixed their launch issues of basing discounts on time zones, which led to 1) different users seeing different discounts, and 2) users given a discount that is higher/lower than displayed on the screen?
Being at the Jellyfish headquarters right now, I can confirm that the time zone issues on day 1 last week have been fixed. Everything is running smooth.
I like this, kind of like a woot off but with more drama.
This feels very bubbly.
Sweet - another time and money wasting site! And of course I already added it to my Daily Cycle bookmark folder!
Jellyfish is simply ebates.com with a little extra juice….but my hat goes off to their Smack of the Day idea to build traffic…but otherwise, its a super crowded space
This is brilliant.. only a matter of time before they’re acquired.
Does some one remember Mobshop? Exactly same idea but > 5 years back …
Jellyfish SOTD needs an RSS feed for updating people on the latest SOTD!
Not completely compatible with FireFox (I’m using 2.0) - You can login ok, but the [My Info] page is all askew….Also, repeated logins using IE 7 were in vain - once logged in, you click on [My Info] - it asks you to login again (vicious circle here) - forget IE 7 for now.
CORRECTION: You need to enable Java/Javascript in Firefox to get it to work properly - my bad!
I bought one of the Ipods and freaked out when I got an email with all the addresses of everyone that bought one. Pretty amature mistake for a site with that much backing. Makes me wonder if I will get the refund after 60 days or not.
Dutch auctions sure are weird when you’re not used to it. I saw a real life auction for flowers once and it’s really strange to see it. You wonder how buyer got the nerves to stand up and claim the lot when everybody else is sitting idle.
Very nice system
Sounds like an old B2B auction site called onedayfree.com
Trolling: Dutch auctions (e.g. jellyfish) aren’t new. General-purpose double auctions (see darple.com) are. Notice we’ve got postings for things like a cabin cruizer and grand piano. Sellers of high-end items are comfortable because both buyer and seller retain control. But as we get more items listed (email contact@darple.com to get on “invited guests” list now if you’re not a student), the fact that buyers compete for sellers’ items at the same time that sellers compete for buyers’ business will make it exciting!
For all of the wine lovers out here looking for their own ‘deal a day’ please visit a site that we recently helped to launch called Wines ‘Til Sold Out (http://www.winestilsoldout.com).
The site offers one great wine a day ’til its sold out. The prices are 30% to 70% off of regular retail pricing and the shipping is FREE if you purchase the minimum bottle requirement. Sign up to receive daily wine alerts via email.
The site is backed by a wine retailer that has been in the business for more than 35 years. The wine rotation is very good. We’ve featured $350 bottles and $4.99 bottles.
[Sorry, posted this onto the wrong thread before... please disregard earlier post!]
Pretty sweet idea. Good way to get some attention.
Sounds like Mercata.com, also called MobShop.com (circa 1999)
For all interested in Jellyfish’s smack of the day take caution.
Look at the archives and you’ll see that the person who has been receiving the best deal is from Madison, WI, the same place where Jellyfish is located.
Also the system is extremly buggy still. One of which causes Jellyfish to charge a persons credit card even if the order does not go through, which if you read the archive post for each Smack of the Day isn’t uncommon.
My bro got an error that his credit card information was not valid, even though it was, and now he has multiple $300+ charges on his card for each time he tried to correct the “error”.
DrNo actually not true. I bought the camera from the smack of the day last week and Jellyfish authorized my card but didn’t charge it. I did get charged from B&H Photo the store that was selling the camera. I just talked to the Jellyfish customer service this morning and they explained it to me. Sounds legit to me