In case you missed it, the holiday season is here. According to market research group Statista, 209.6 million in the U.S. shopped online in 2016, and Adobe Digital Insights (ADI) is predicting that 2017 online holiday sales will break $100 billion.
One Fairfax-based cashback website is poised to take advantage of that online trend: Cashback Monitor.
Starting in 2009, the website has more than 20,000 page views a day, and during the holiday season that can be as high as 80,000 page views a day. Between 2015 and 2016, page views grew from 5.5 million to 6.3 million.
A Northeastern University graduate, Yansong Wang launched the site after his first foray into cashback platforms. In 2003, he launched ExtraRebates to help shoppers save money. Now, he’s focused full time on Cashback Monitor.
For those not in the know, cashback platforms give consumers a percentage of money back on their purchases when they shop at specific stores. And those deals vary between sites, such as Ebates, Simply Best Coupons and BeFrugal.
Shopping portals are competing with each other and can offer widely varying rates for the same merchants. To stay at the top of the competition and help online shoppers choose the right website in a short time, Wang developed Cashback Monitor to grasp data from his competitors.
Listing the cashback rate from most merchants, the website ranked them according to the cashback categories in green columns. Shoppers can directly search the store, click the cashback website or the merchant website to purchase the product.
The data is updated every day between 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. (EST), during the holiday season it will add one more update a day.
"Their real-time information is really helpful," said Ying Yin, an IT consultant at Attain and a user of the Cashback Monitor website. "During the holiday season, I may get more than 20 percent cashback if I refresh the page effectively, that's awesome."
Apart from comparing cashback, the website also converted points or miles to cashback percentage, helping travelers define points and miles values.
"I love travelling, that's why I choose it," added Yin. "If I logged in, the calculating system helps me to decide whether getting cashback or saving points to buy airline tickets."
Cashback Monitor's gross revenue increased 40 percent last year and most of the revenue comes from advertising and cashback referral fee.
"I hope the traffic will increase 20 percent during the holiday season," said Wang.
Of course, as online shopping increases, the competition for Cashback Monitor is continuing to grow stronger. Sites like Cashbackholic, Evreward and Cashback Watch are the top competitors.
Wang expected the company's gross revenue will increase 30 to 50 percent by the end of May 2018.
