The history of the development of Dronk.ru - from the selection of quadcopters to the return of money for purchases on AliExpress and not only
Hi, GeekTimes. Today I want to talk about the thorny path that our company has taken in the last 1.5 years and about its new transformation into a cashback search engine. In addition, I will be happy to donate 100 rubles to each person who will register on the updated Dronk.ru before the end of June, and I will especially welcome your comments regarding our new image.
If you have been reading our publications for a long time, then you know that a year and a half ago we created a service for choosing quadcopters. Since then much water has flowed under the bridge. There were lucky moments, it was very sad. But, being a real startup who cannot give up - we have twice reborn, having gone from choosing quadcopters to creating a system where each person can return up to 8% of the purchase price on AliExpress, GearBest, Banggood and other online stores in China. That's how it was.
Two years ago, I was fascinated by quadrocopters, but I didn’t get very involved in the instructions, so very soon my first DJI Phantom flew away, which many people could read about earlier in Habré . At that moment, I again had to be puzzled by the problem of choosing a quadrocopter, and I very closely sank into this question. About a year later, my friends and I decided that it would be good to solve this problem more globally and we created Dronk.ru.
')
They took the idea very well, it even happened to literally tell us about myself at VC in just a few days (at that time Zuckerberg Call) and our community was actively gaining momentum.
We continued to work actively, publications about us continued to go out, and we plunged deeper into the topic, did dozens of reviews, flew on a variety of drones and transferred this knowledge to the service with the help of updating cards and algorithms.
And everything would be fine, but for Russia this is a very narrow topic and not so many people are passionate about it, which means it’s not easy to make a living. So at some point we had to either close or invent something. We decided to move on and added the ability to choose Chinese phones. Again, we tested dozens of new models and immediately decided to expand the service, so we tested still eksh cameras, multicookers, smart scales, mice, smart lights, tablets, smart watches and other gadgets. We wanted to accumulate knowledge about the gadget market and present this knowledge as a service to choose from all these areas, but the truth is that we physically did not have enough resources to know everything about everything and not at the level of rumors, but on real test level.
Looking at the situation from the outside, we realized that we ourselves had become part of a huge group of people who are testing various gadgets and this information is available to anyone, and Yandex has already done much more to combine this knowledge. This includes our articles, for example:
In addition, Yandex.market during this time managed to launch a section for the selection of quadcopters, so it did not leave us anything unique.
We still have some “innovations”, such as a unique relevancy system for the search line, but this was not enough and we decided that we would continue to help choose gadgets, but now we will create a database where we will collect offers from all Chinese stores, as well as add the opportunity return money for every purchase made through us.
Thus, the service has 2 key features:
1. Search for goods in all Chinese stores at once
2. The ability to get some money for the purchase
It is worth analyzing in more detail.
At the moment we have connected the following online stores:
1. AliExpress.com
2. GearBest.com
3. TinyDeal.com
4. Banggood.com
5. DX.com
6. Coolicool.com
7. Tomtop.com
That is, if you are going to buy a phone, for example, Xiaomi Redmi 3, you can simply enter the query "Xiaomi Redmi 3" in our search box and immediately receive offers to sell this phone in all these online stores. Including you can immediately compare the price and size of the cashback, which you automatically get by making a purchase in any of the proposed online stores.
If you do not know the name of the product, then you can enter more general search phrases. But it is better to introduce in English, as the translation of the names of goods in Chinese online stores leaves much to be desired. However, this is probably why prices there are almost always more profitable.
As part of the service, we have organized a convenient system of returning part of the money for a purchase made through our affiliate link. That is, if you go from our search to the online store and make a purchase there - we will automatically credit part of the money for this purchase to your account.
For those who do not know yet - this is how it works:
We also implemented a convenient check of the amount of remuneration for a specific product. That is, if you have already selected a product at one of the above stores, you can add the URL of this product to the search box and find out how much money we will credit to your account if you buy it through us.
Here's what it looks like:
All 2 years we are trying to do something useful, but the usefulness of this is best seen by the users, so we will be very grateful for your comments and suggestions that can be expressed either here or in our Vkontakte community . Thank.
If something is not clear, then I am ready to answer any questions, and if problems arise on the service, then we are waiting for your letters to support@dronk.ru
If you have been reading our publications for a long time, then you know that a year and a half ago we created a service for choosing quadcopters. Since then much water has flowed under the bridge. There were lucky moments, it was very sad. But, being a real startup who cannot give up - we have twice reborn, having gone from choosing quadcopters to creating a system where each person can return up to 8% of the purchase price on AliExpress, GearBest, Banggood and other online stores in China. That's how it was.
Two years ago, I was fascinated by quadrocopters, but I didn’t get very involved in the instructions, so very soon my first DJI Phantom flew away, which many people could read about earlier in Habré . At that moment, I again had to be puzzled by the problem of choosing a quadrocopter, and I very closely sank into this question. About a year later, my friends and I decided that it would be good to solve this problem more globally and we created Dronk.ru.
')
They took the idea very well, it even happened to literally tell us about myself at VC in just a few days (at that time Zuckerberg Call) and our community was actively gaining momentum.
We continued to work actively, publications about us continued to go out, and we plunged deeper into the topic, did dozens of reviews, flew on a variety of drones and transferred this knowledge to the service with the help of updating cards and algorithms.
And everything would be fine, but for Russia this is a very narrow topic and not so many people are passionate about it, which means it’s not easy to make a living. So at some point we had to either close or invent something. We decided to move on and added the ability to choose Chinese phones. Again, we tested dozens of new models and immediately decided to expand the service, so we tested still eksh cameras, multicookers, smart scales, mice, smart lights, tablets, smart watches and other gadgets. We wanted to accumulate knowledge about the gadget market and present this knowledge as a service to choose from all these areas, but the truth is that we physically did not have enough resources to know everything about everything and not at the level of rumors, but on real test level.
Looking at the situation from the outside, we realized that we ourselves had become part of a huge group of people who are testing various gadgets and this information is available to anyone, and Yandex has already done much more to combine this knowledge. This includes our articles, for example:
In addition, Yandex.market during this time managed to launch a section for the selection of quadcopters, so it did not leave us anything unique.
We still have some “innovations”, such as a unique relevancy system for the search line, but this was not enough and we decided that we would continue to help choose gadgets, but now we will create a database where we will collect offers from all Chinese stores, as well as add the opportunity return money for every purchase made through us.
Thus, the service has 2 key features:
1. Search for goods in all Chinese stores at once
2. The ability to get some money for the purchase
It is worth analyzing in more detail.
Search for goods in all stores at once
At the moment we have connected the following online stores:
1. AliExpress.com
2. GearBest.com
3. TinyDeal.com
4. Banggood.com
5. DX.com
6. Coolicool.com
7. Tomtop.com
That is, if you are going to buy a phone, for example, Xiaomi Redmi 3, you can simply enter the query "Xiaomi Redmi 3" in our search box and immediately receive offers to sell this phone in all these online stores. Including you can immediately compare the price and size of the cashback, which you automatically get by making a purchase in any of the proposed online stores.
If you do not know the name of the product, then you can enter more general search phrases. But it is better to introduce in English, as the translation of the names of goods in Chinese online stores leaves much to be desired. However, this is probably why prices there are almost always more profitable.
Return money for every purchase in China
As part of the service, we have organized a convenient system of returning part of the money for a purchase made through our affiliate link. That is, if you go from our search to the online store and make a purchase there - we will automatically credit part of the money for this purchase to your account.
For those who do not know yet - this is how it works:
Know your cashback
We also implemented a convenient check of the amount of remuneration for a specific product. That is, if you have already selected a product at one of the above stores, you can add the URL of this product to the search box and find out how much money we will credit to your account if you buy it through us.
Here's what it looks like:
Conclusion
All 2 years we are trying to do something useful, but the usefulness of this is best seen by the users, so we will be very grateful for your comments and suggestions that can be expressed either here or in our Vkontakte community . Thank.
If something is not clear, then I am ready to answer any questions, and if problems arise on the service, then we are waiting for your letters to support@dronk.ru
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/394777/
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