UshopUgive.com ceases trading
Howard Lake | 22 April 2006 | News
UshopUgive.com, the online shopping mall for charities, has ceased trading after leading retailers and merchants indicated their “reluctance” to continue working with the site.
UshopUgive has operated an online shopping mall to raise funds for over 70 partner charities since 2000, and offered over 100 online merchants. Charities earned income from sales from these merchants generated via their link to UshopUgive.
A brief statement on the UshopUgive site reports that retailers and affiliates representing 50% of the commission generated by the site, including Amazon.co.uk and the affiliate representing Argos.co.uk and flybe.com, had expressed their reluctance to continue working with the site.
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According to UshopUgive they did not like the fact that “there was an ongoing incentive (i.e. the donation to charity)”. As a result, customers were not, after their first sale, clicking directly to the merchants site, presumably as the merchants had expected. Instead, they were still visiting UshopUgive first before clicking through, thereby continuing to generate a commission for their selected charity.
Since online affiliate marketing is based on the premise, from the merchant’s point of view, that it is paying usually a one-off introduction fee to the affiliate site, and that future dealings will be direct with the newly acquired customer, such an approach would represent a drain on marketing expenditure.
The tone of UshopUgive’s announcement is therefore one of “enormous regret”. With the withdrawal of key merchants, their business model was clearly not going to be sustainable so they have decided to cease trading.
In their valedictory statement the management team noted that “all sales made up to the point of the closure of the site are being honoured so your charity will be paid for any sale made on its behalf”.
Many charity shopping malls have appeared over the last six or seven years and most have failed within a short time. UshopUgive survived longer than most and, based on their statement, appear to have victims of their success.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.