Is Kooday Doomed for Failure?
Posted: Monday, August 09, 2010
by David Ruebush
http://www.iwantacar.com
Kooday is born. Have you heard of it? Just a few days ago, a brand new search engine was launched that claims to be the future of Internet Search. However, there is just one major flaw. It is filled with irrelevant results, which leaves one scratching their head in confusion. If Kooday is the future of Internet Search, why does it completely ignore the concept of serving up results that are related to the topic one is searching for?
So, how does Kooday think they can compete? The answer is simple. Money. Kooday is paying its visitors to use the site. A person can join Kooday, deposit a small amount of money into their account, and actually purchase their own search terms. Then, they share in the revenue generated by those terms. At first, this is an incredibly attractive notion. Imagine if a person owned the keyword "books" on Google and earned a portion of all the revenue Google has generated throughout the years with that term.
Before we get into the upside potential represented by Kooday here, let's discuss how search engines generate revenue. When a person searches for a term on Yahoo, Bing, Google, or any other major search engine, they get a list of results. At the very top of the results they will see three "sponsored" results as well as a list of "sponsored" results on the right hand column of the page. These are advertisements. Millions of companies spend billions of dollars bidding for placement within these results. Every single search phrase imaginable is a potential income opportunity for the search engine.
Therefore, Kooday has the same income opportunity as any other search engine. If they generate enough traffic, millions of advertisers will bid for placement in the "sponsored" results of billions of search terms. However, unlike Google and the others, Kooday allows their visitors to own these terms and share in the revenue. What an amazing concept, until you take a closer look.
Kooday may have missed the mark.
At first they are not apparent, but Kooday has a few major flaws that could send the site crashing down faster than it launched. For the first several months, Kooday should get momentum simply by the attraction of turning a quick buck. Millions of lay persons will most likely flock to the site and purchase billions of search phrases with dreams of cashing in on their Internet millions. Starry eyed visitors who know nothing of Internet Search will gobble up search terms expecting the cash to flow. And, at first, cash will flow, until reality sets in.
As millions of visitors participate in the initial search term feeding frenzy, savvy Internet marketers will pick up on the major flaws. First, Kooday has no relevancy whatsoever within their search results. They are not a search engine at all. They are a directory with absolutely no human editing preventing garbage from cluttering up the results. Second, the "sponsored" results on the right hand column are also irrelevant. The ads that appear on the right hand have nothing to do with the search term queried by the visitor. Third, Kooday is not collecting 1099 information from their members, which could cause a major problem if the IRS comes knocking and blocks them from making cash payouts to members.
Lets explore each of these three major flaws and see how they affect the future of Kooday.
Without relevancy, the site will not get used. Just like advertisers want to appear in the results that relate to their goods and services, searchers want to see results that relate to their topic of interest. If a person searches for "vampire books" they hope to get a list of books about vampires. They do not expect a list of results about dogs, airplanes, credit cards, music videos, and Barbie Dolls. When they get this jumbled up list of no good results on Kooday, they will leave. And worse, they will not return. Instead, they will go back to the trusty Google, where they find what they are looking for.
Without relevancy, advertisers will soon realize their dollar is wasted on Kooday. If a person owns a website that markets shoes, they want their site to appear in the results for all search terms related with shoes. Even more, they want their "sponsored" ads to appear when people search terms related to shoes. After all, the best opportunity for the owner of a site that markets shoes to make a sale is to show up in the results list for a person who is searching for shoes. It is highly unlikely that a person searching for "Beyonce Videos" will click a link to a shoe site.
Therefore, without relevancy, Kooday will sacrifice both search traffic and advertiser revenue in the long haul. This is a horrible sacrifice for a quick initial buck. The potential for long term revenue growth is staggering, if only there were relevancy within the search results and "sponsored" ads.
Finally, if Kooday plans to attract and retain members by sharing the revenue generated by search terms, they need to be careful of the IRS. Without collecting 1099 information from their members, they are exposed to a huge liability. The IRS could freeze their payouts until they collect and report all 1099 incomes properly. Nothing would drive traffic and members away faster than not being able to get paid. After all, doesn't a person want to join Kooday so they can own search terms and share the profits? If they can't get paid, they will leave and never return.
Kooday is a great idea. The concept of allowing members to own search terms and share the revenues is amazing. It actually could be one of the single greatest concepts ever in the history of the Internet. The initial wave of membership traffic and search term bidding should be proof positive of this. However, Kooday needs to address the flaws of relevancy and IRS reporting quickly, or they will be here today, gone tomorrow.
For more information about Kooday, click here.
This Article has been viewed 2,918 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (10 total)Hello david, I am a member of Kooday and I want to react on your article. Since Kooday is a Canadian business operating on Canadian servers Kooday can be forced to request its US members to declare their income to the IRS. Non-US users however will never be not paid due to the 1099 IRS thing.Furthermore all unrelevant links to keywords will automatically be removed at one point as the admin declared a few weeks ago.What I find interesting David is you wrote a review that isn't very positive YET... you have a referral link (yours?) pointed to KOOday for more info? hhmmmm....is this just in case this company takes off, and you actually will benefit? Or????Yes. I am a Kooday member. And, I am doing very well with Kooday. As a member, I am concerned with my investment. I started doubting Kooday as I began using the site and comparing it. Especially as I started referring friends and discussing the site with them. Many of them are having the same concerns. So, I wrote about these concerns and sent a copy to Kooday. Good news! They replied and answered all my concerne very well. Also, if you are on Facebook, search for Kooday Profits. There is a LOT of very usefull information there to help every member make money.well, IRS is not really that necessary for non-US members coz they use paypal. I just received my first payment and waiting for my 2nd payment next week...Hi there Dominick. Since I have published my article, there has been a lot of response to it. Kooday has addressed some of my concerns directly. First, they told me they DO have a search engine platform, but they DO NOT have it active yet. They plan to release their spiders at a certain point in the future (hopefully soon). Then, they will produce a search results list very similar to Google. They also told me they are planning to clean the site up a bit and make advertisements more relevant. If they are able to produce a relevant, useful search engine, and they are able to clean their site up with relevant, nice looking advertisements, they could be on the right track. We will have to wait and see.Also, yes, they are a Canadian company. However, if they plan to participate in U.S. dollars and have U.S. members they really need to get the 1099 thing working. The U.S. government can block ALL U.S. citizens from participating or getting paid.
ahh, their web crawlers are not yet active for they are currently in beta mode... we'll have to wait if relevance can be addressed soon. Just today, they have introduced the lion's profit-share for users with 50,000 credits on hand. I believe that it will be one of reasons to scare small investors away, the way I see it, there will be time in the future that they will only pay members on certain levels... of course those with huge money...
Hello David, Its an excellent article. I am a member of Kooday. The flaws you mentioned should be addressed soon. I do hope this search engine could be a great earning source of online money earners. But I am not convinced about the decision of 50000 Profit share credits. 50000 credits are really big amount. You have to spend lots of money and transactions to reach that figure. I bought some keywords at only $0.10 but most of those keywords are valued between $10 to $50. That's an amazing figure. e.g. I bought the keyword 'Orkut' simply for $0.10 but now this word is valued $42+ amazing indeed. I hope Kooday would last long and all the flaws will be sorted out soon.
This is great ! You do a little bit of butt kissing, then a bit of back-handed slapping and then a little bit of butt kissing and then finally post the link with your referral commissioned link !simply fantastic :DAh I see. You're the nut who continuously spams my blog with BS about me addressing problems and then posting my referral link. Maybe you should spend your time in a different way.
Hello david rubbish, I could have believed you if I didn't put your ref link below. You discouraged people to join and then you post your referral link c'mon! buy my keywords instead!
What a joke. You have made how much with KOODAY? Makes one wonder since KOODAY you have now started tagvillage. Careful this may come back and bite you. Talk about cut throat
Funny Dave your making good money off KOODAY and actually started tagvillage using alot of koodays ideas. Very cut throat of you to bash KOODAY. For those following this guy word of advice......another Paul Birdsall here. KOODAY w ill prove him wrong.
Looks like them pathetic kooiii hicks are having fun again. That's alright, even retards have the right to play and show their pathetic self.
David,
Your article was great. I have come across both Kooday and KuleSearch. Both continue to dominate the same concept of buying and selling keywords. However if this concept was followed by existing big guns like Yahoo, Google or Bing then things would have been different. Both companies have long list of affiliates however if a newbie ever wanted to search something on the net, they would prefer working with Google than any other promising search engine which intimidates people to make money by using them.
Well written and thanks for sharing!
Dave
So, does anybody knows what happened to kooday? Their site is still active w/c means they're not down yet. So anybody has any idea what's the current standing of kooday?
I was able to read their june14 update w/c according to the update (w/c is already been removed), one of the staff left since s/he felt that s/he being left alone to resolve kooday's crisis. The owner of the site also got hospitalized due to an incident causing the resolution for the payout problem delayed. That's the latest info I got. Does anybody has any much recent update than I have
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