What We Can Learn About Intuit’s Purchase of Mint.com for $170 Million
I just finished reading the article on the acquisition of Mint.com by Intuit (the makers of Quicken, QuickBooks, MyCorporation.com, etc) at the WSJ Online as well as the synopsis by Chef Patrick and Michael Berkens and I was struck by something that I think is very applicable to all domainers, developers, and web startups and that is the power of non-standard monetization.
I have long been a fan of Mint.com and have loved it for its ease of use, clever packaging, and beautiful user interface but as a full time finance guy (I am a Certified Financial Planner™) and full time domainer/publisher/developer (nerd) with hundreds of finance related websites that I own and manage I was most impressed with the way that Mint.com makes its money.
If you are not familiar with Mint.com then the beauty of their monetization strategy is that once a user creates an account and inputs their financial info (and info for logging into their online accounts so that Mint.com can suck the data from them securely and almost instantly) then Mint.com not only gives the user a lot of cool graphical representations of ways that they can track their money but more importantly Mint.com gives the user personalized recommendations for financial products that the Mint.com algorithm has determined will save them money.
For example, if Mint.com is tracking a credit card of mine that has for illustrations sake an 11.99% APR and I carry a balance on the card from time to time (again, for illustrations sake) then the Mint.com algorithm may say something like “Mint.com recommends signing up for a Capital One credit card with an 8.99% APR and 1% cash back – based on your current spending habits then we predict that you will save $867 over the next 12 months if you switch from your current credit card to this new credit card”. Then of course the link to the credit card is an affiliate link so that Mint.com makes an affiliate commission from the credit card company every time someone either submits a credit card application or gets approved for a credit card (depending upon the credit card issuer as that is the way most credit card affiliate programs work).
What is absolutely beautiful about this monetization strategy is that Mint.com did not just decide to slap credit card banner ads all around their money management software so that as soon as you log in to your account you are instantly slapped in the face with all kinds of blinking banner ads telling you to sign up for a credit monitoring service or submit an application for this credit card or open an account at this bank etc etc.
Come on – be honest – we all tend to get lazy in this area and we would all be very tempted to just take the easy way out and slap up some banner ads or AdSense and be done with it rather than taking the time to really think hard about how we could make the user experience better and also monetize our site to its absolute best potential.
It’s easy to grab some pre-made banner ads from the merchant. It’s easy to copy and paste some Google AdSense on your site. It’s much harder to be creative and think of a way that you can monetize your site so that both A) Visitors to the site are best served and B) You receive the greatest ROI possible.
We could all learn a lesson from Mint.com (many lessons in fact but this one in particular) that jumping in and being creative with your monetization strategy, working hard to maximize the website’s monetization potential, and most importantly putting users first will almost always bring great results for the website owner in the end.
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- Did Wesabe Lose to Mint Because of a Horrible Domain Name?
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- 5 Reasons Why You Might Not Be Making Money Domaining
- Case Study Friday: CreditCardChaser.com
- Affiliate Program
actually a great post about the specific monetization strategy. This is the beginning of web 3.0 where the content and database and search are in realtime and morph with you.
i agree. nice article. we should not only think about development, but meaningful development. its why mass development is mainly useless. better to concentrate on one or just a few developments
You are right in that meaningful development is the key but I would tend to disagree with your statement that mass development is mainly useless. You are correct in that you said mainly because I agree in that most domain mass development is fairly useless but mass development of domains can be done very successfully if one can take the time to figure out a great strategy and then work to replicate and scale that strategy across many related domain names (this works especially well in different lead generation niches). You are absolutely right though that meaningful development should be the priority.
“Arguably the domain address is the foundation of the digital revolution. From foundations spring creations TM” The fact is that to be accessed on the web you need a call letter identified address. Without a good identifying address a company is unrecognizable and will be lost and not found.
You have to locate a company through its address. Critics that deride the values of domain addresses can argue all they want on how unimportant a web address is , but without its foundation you will not be located. KISS , location,location,location or Locate,Locate,Locate.
Gratefully , Jeff