What is the name of this idea/site and does it work?

Hi,

I had an idea recently and assumed that people in this forum would know what the name of the type of site I'm
thinking of building is. If I know what it's generally called then I can do more research on it.

The idea would be quite simple: build a shopping portal/comparison site that shows visitors products
from Amazon/EBay/etc. Users would be brought into the site from Adwords, and the products would be populated in the site
in realtime by making searches to Amazon Affiliates API etc, based on the Adwords keyword.

The idea is that if the cost you pay for the clicks to bring the traffic is less than the margin you will make from Amazon sales
you make some profit.

What's this type of site called? Are there any good examples of these types of sites?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_shopping_website

You might want to take a look at the Panda section in there for SEO implications.

Hi tiyowan,

yeah that's exactly like it. I did a bit more research and found that the term Shopping Arbitrage is sometimes used — you buy clicks for a lower price than the total amount you make from sales kickback from the affiliate.

Shopzilla seems like a good example of this.

I don't think Panda etc is too important, since traffic can be bought.