For the last three years, LOOT has only been offering free web access to ads from its already published paper editions, a model which has been become the industry norm for UK classifieds web sites.
The new pay-per-day service, however, will provide instant access to the latest and freshest ads from all the most recent editions, while it will still be absolutely free to browse LOOT archive ads and place a private ad.
The pay-per-day service was launched after in-house research showed that many of its current LOOT web users were prepared to pay for up-to-date content. The research also showed that a high value was put on LOOT's content both because of its high volume and variety and because it was not available elsewhere.
LOOT's web site contains classified ads for all types of goods and services including accommodation, personals, computers, household items, music and holidays, unlike the Auto Trader and Exchange & Mart sites which respectively either focus on cars or have much less content.
On the first day of the launch of LOOT's new pay-per-day service, the hits per min went up from 850 to 1300 (an increase of more than 52%) with approximately 3,500 users opting to pay.
The new pay-per-day service is the first step in LOOT's strategy to open new revenue streams from its web site, with other high-volume services planned to launch in the next few weeks.
Paying for web content which uses newspapers, magazines and other content as it source material has so far had a very chequered history. The Daily Telegraph attempted to offer a paid service several years ago with little success as the same content was available free elsewhere and too closely emulated the paper version. In principle, the LOOT service is closer to that offered by The Financial Times which offers its most valuable content at a premium price.
Each pay-per-day transaction is called an e-dition and is priced at £1.30. Each edition allows the viewer to look at LOOT's freshest ads for up to 24 hours and is valid for a period of up to 6 months from date of purchase.
Reductions in price are available with larger numbers of e-ditions purchased. Payment is made online by credit card using a secure system developed in association with DataCash, the UK's leading e-commerce payment gateway Click Contact Link .
Paul Broome, LOOT Group IT Manager, said:
" For LOOT, our pay-per-day service is the first real step away from our printed product. As our content is extremely valuable and updated daily, we know that people are prepared to pay for it. We believe this service will really appeal to the seasoned bargain hunters out there, while the rest will continue to browse our free service. In the next few weeks, we will be launching other new high-volume paid-for services, which will provide us further sources of additional web income. The LOOT site will become the consumer benchmark for the second-user market, where we'll be able to offer a huge variety of additional services such as advising advertisers on prices, etc. It'll be the biggest consumer database in existence. "
Gavin Breeze, managing director from DataCash said:
"LOOT has ambitious plans to generate an extremely high volume of credit and debit card transactions from their web site. DataCash provides LOOT with the ability to authorise these transactions securely, in realtime, before settling the monies directly into the LOOT bank account. Datacash payment technology has allowed LOOT to unlock the earning potential of its unique intellectual property. We look forward to working with them as they launch their new e-commerce services over the coming months.
"As a high volume site, LOOT is one of the first web merchants to use DataCash's unique vTIDs (Virtual Terminals) technology that enable LOOT to process multiple transactions concurrently. Each DataCash vTID controls a pool of Terminal IDs; incoming transactions are assigned to each in turn. A standard vTID with five TIDs attached can handle up to five transactions every 8 seconds. A vTID with ten TIDs attached can handle more than one transaction per second."
LOOT also recently announced its most recent audited traffic figures of 4,242,967 page impressions per month (ABC//electronic July 1998), the highest in the UK for a classifieds web site.
For further information, please contact:
Icky Hasnain, LOOT Ltd, LOOT House, 24/32 Kilburn High Road, London NW6 5TF T: 0171 625 0266 F: 0171 625 7921 e-mail: Click Contact Link
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
For more information please contact:
The DataCash website: Click Contact Link
Contact:
Click Contact Link DataCash Tel: +44 (0)171 820 7733 Mobile: +44 (0)370 752 563
