Group Buying – One More Player

I already posted about group buying not long time ago and I was wondering if I should post this, one more time, because I am still not getting this business model specially in the Middle East and North Africa region and how they are going to generate money.

Yesterday, I found a new player from my twitter timeline, called GoSawa, because curiosity killed the cat, I pointed my browser to the site.

On their “about us” page, you discover that they were established in January 2011 and “If it ain’t a good deal, it won’t be featured on our site – that simple.”, and since, they have closed only 2 deals in Beirut as follows:

1) Coconut Body Scrub & Relaxing Foot Reflexology Massage: US$25- x 18 bought = US$450-
2) $30 for $60 worth of Tattoo at Scream Body: US$30- x 6 bought = US$180-

So the total value of both deals is US$630- and considering their share is 50%, they ended up making US$315- since they launched, so that’s effectively US$3-/day (from 01/01/2011 till 15/04/2011).

I might sound very sarcastic doing these small calculations, but wondering how the owners of these sites are making money to cover expenses,… just saying.

One last word to group buying sites, stop using the same template, it seems you have lots of cash to burn, go spend some money and get a different design for your sites, you might end up distinguishing yourself from the crowd.