Ever since the average Joe got familiar with the phrase “Group Buying”, Group Buying sites have been popping up left and right in South Africa.

At first only a hand full of Group Buying sites operated in South Africa and then with the acquisition of Twangoo by the world leader in Group Buying, Groupon, sites have been popping up with the hopes of maybe also having the same luck.

Currently South Africans have access to over 28 Group Buying sites, but its seems the market has reached a tipping point. While I have seen a incline the amount and types of deals Groupon South Africa is offering now a days, for one company it seems like its just not worth it anymore.

Dealio, a Cape Town based Group Buying site this morning sent out a notice that they will be closing down at the end of this week. Dealio which started out just offering deals in Cape Town, and later expanded to other major South Africa cities, did not disclose why they are closing down but just said that it was due to circumstances beyond their control.

Dealio lasted just over eight month, which I would say is decent in a sector where you have over 28 competitors. The question now is how long before another one or two closes their doors?

Do you know of any other Group Buying sites that have recently closed down?

Since the acquisition of local group buying startup Twangoo by Groupon, the local group buying scene has grown at a tremendous rate with new sites popping up each month.

Currently South Africans have access to almost 30 group buying coupon sites, with everyone from celebrities, newspaper companies to airlines trying to get a piece of the pie. However for the consumer all these group buying sites can be a nightmare, cause signing up to 30 sites could get your inbox spammed severely every day and having to visit each site could take up some time.

This is where the group buying aggregators comes into play, South Africa currently has 6 group buying deal aggregators operating and what they do is collect all the deals from all the different group buying sites and display them in one central place. But how are they making money doing this? Affiliates.

Some of these group buying sites mask links and then redirect you to the deals with their affiliate links on, I see nothing wrong with that as it costs money and allot of effort to operate a site, but according to some of the group buying sites they aggregate’s terms of use, this may be illegal.

Quoting the following point from the Groupon API TOS Non-Permitted Purposes; API Restrictions: “use the API to aggregate, consolidate or otherwise arrange, display or make available Groupon Content in combination with any third party or any Groupon competitors’ content, for any commercial purpose or in any manner that Groupon determines could diminish the value or integrity of its business or brand;”

What this basically say is that you may not aggregate Groupon deals, and you may not display it in combination with other competitors (other group buying sites) deals. And currently all the local group buying aggregators are doing this.

My question is did any of these aggregators read through the different group buying sites terms of use? And do you think its fair to have statements like that in your terms of use? I mean these aggregators are really doing these group buying sites a favour by promoting their deals.

I for one welcome these aggregators as it makes my task easy in finding great deals on a daily basis.

Check out the following group buying deal aggregators:
AllDeals
Today’s Deals
Deal Checker
DealSpade
Yadda
Deal Africa
DealTracker
DealZone

It’s clear that Group Buying is big business in South Africa with more than 15 deal sites operating in the country, and new ones popping up on a weekly basis. Dealio since it’s launch has been one of the top group buying deal sites in Cape Town and has now broaden their horizons.

For a few months now Cape Town has been enjoying the best in massive deals on restaurants, spas, days out and a whole lot more, and now Johannesburg residents can also get in on the action.

Dealio is kicking off it’s Johannesburg launch with a deal from Soul Candy offering residents Bump 27 and Bump 28 for only R127. Yes for only R127 you get both Bump CD’s totaling to a saving of R191 for 6 discs of the biggest house anthems from the past two years.

Dealio offers various payment options ensuring just about anybody can get their hand on their great deals, users can pay by Credit Card, EFT or uKash vouchers obtainable from any Shoprite, Checkers or Pick ‘n Pay.

So what are you waiting for Johannesburg, go grab the first Dealio deal available for your city.

Yet another group buying website has opened up shop in South Africa, this time backed by Avusa Media who owns local titles such as The Times, Sowetan, Sunday World and Elle.

The launch of Zappon short for South African Coupon, draws on a trend that is part of a word wide phenomenon called group buying lead by Groupon. Group buying has picked up tremendously with local consumers with no less than 14 group buying sites already operating within South Africa and one of them already bought out by Groupon.

“We know we are entering an incredibly competitive market at the moment but feel this is the perfect timing for the launch of Zappon.co.za,” said Mr. Elan Lohmann, Zappon creator and GM of Avusa Media LIVE.

The fact that Zappon is owned and operated by a large media company may see them rise to the top of local group buying scene, seeing as they have instant access to to an audience of more than 2.5 million readers through their various newspapers and not to mention the radio stations they own.

With such a large media presence, Zappon will also not have a problem finding great deals to offer their clients through their contacts with Advertisers from Avusa’s range of media companies.

Zappon is however no different from the other local group buying sites, they will also offer consumers between 40-90% off luxury deals such as spa treatments and meals.

Some may say that the local group buying scene is becoming too overcrowded but for consumers this just means more and greater deals on offer and at the end of the day the site offering the best deals will cry king.

Let’s be honest, you know something has gone mainstream when there is a WordPress plugin to do it, and that has exactly happened with Group Buying.

A new WordPress plugin has been developed by Group Buying Site that allows you to turn any WordPress blog into a fully fledged Groupon clone, allowing you to run your own group buy flash sales and daily deals.

Collecting money is also easy as all you need to be able to receive money from visitors is a PayPal account, but could be a bit of an obstacle specially in countries like South Africa where PayPal is not such a widely used service.

Setting up a Group Buying site sure does involve having the correct software to drive your sales, but that is only part of the business. This WordPress plugin will help you solve the first part of setting up a Group Buying site, and it won’t cost you an arm and a leg also. The Group Buying WordPress plugin is available from as little as $199 depending on the version you want, that is lest than R1500 for functionality that could cost you easily R20 000+ if you get someone to develop a Group Buying website for you.

The WordPress Group Buying plugin give you access to easily create deals allowing you to set minimum deal purchases required, max deal purchases allowed, deal expiration date/time, voucher expiration date just to mention a few features. It also integrates with Google Maps to easily allow you to add deal location, and also offer the site owner full deal statistics.

The code to the WordPress Group Buying plugin is also 100% unencrypted meaning that if you buy it you can easily make changes to the code to add certain functionality you need that isn’t built in already.

With allot of companies cashing in on the whole Group Buying concept you are now also given the power to be the next local Groupon competitor in your area, and who know maybe just maybe you could get Acquired for the odd $1 million.

Just a word of warning, having a Group Buying site is only part of the solution, without good quality deals nobody will buy from you so come prepared and negotiate to offer your visitors good deals they just can’t say no to.

If you want to start your own Group Buying site check out http://groupbuyingsite.com for the Group Buying WordPress plugin that will turn any WordPress site into a Group Buying site.

Group Buying is the latest craze to hit the Internet, the idea is simple and is in fact in use on a daily basis by large brick and mortar shops around the world and only in the last few months it is catching on online with the introduction of sites like Groupon.

Groupon recently turned down a deal of $6 billion from Google just showing how much the concept is worth, shortly after that Groupon acquired a stake in local group buying site Twangoo with aims on bringing the official Groupon brand to South Africa.

So how is the local group buying industry doing and are there place for more sites like these? Since the acquisition of Twangoo by Groupon, local group buying sites have been popping up like crazy. A quick count revealed more than eight group buying sites operating in South Africa and that is just the few I know about.

Who is offering group buying in South Africa? (UPDATED 2012/01/18)

- Twangoo (Groupon My City Deal)
- Ubuntudeal
- Dealio (Closed Down)
- 24 Hours Only
- OneDayOnly
- WiCount
- SaleWine
- Groupon My City Deal
- CollectiveCow
- Skoop
- VuvuPlaza
- Justenga (Closed Down)
- Zappon (Closed Down)
- UCit
- Bangoo (Closed Down)
- CitySlicker
- Dealson
- Dealzela
- GarethCliffDeals.com
- SA Coupons
- CityMob
- 247 Deals
- Food Deals
- Dealison
- Daddy’s Deals
- YouDeal
- Dealify (Closed Down)
- SouthAfricaDailyDeals (Closed Down)
- Buy With Us
- Sugar-Rush
- alldeals (Aggregator)
- Today’s Deals (Aggregator)
- Deal Checker (Aggregator)
- DealSpade (Aggregator)
- Yadda (Aggregator)
- Deal Africa (Aggregator)
- DealTracker (Aggregator)
- DealZone (Aggregator)
- DealScout (Aggregator)
- myDailyDeal (Aggregator)
- Zambu (Aggregator)

These are just a few local group buying sites that I know about that claims to offer up to 90% discount on various products or services like Electronics, Wine, Household Appliances to the normal group buying offers such as Spa Treatments and Dinners. In addition to these sites there are literally new group buying sites popping up each week making this a very competitive market.

But all has not been sunshine and roses in the local group buying market, a while back WiCount made a slip up and accidentally released the names and email address of their customers through a flaw in their system, this also uncovered that WiCount was buying vouchers themselves to spur on sales, but they soon responded saying that this is how they treat deposits of people not ordering through the website.

Another alleged discrepancy was picked up yesterday by Blogger Chris Mills from iMod claiming that group buying site Twangoo is showing discount on their products but in fact a simple google search revealed that the product in question was also being sold by original company at the exact same price. Twangoo has since responded that they have contacted the company and will meet with them and provide feedback but they can assure us that it is not their intention to hoodwink their members or artificially inflate prices to create the illusion of a larger discount.

I guess in a competitive market such as Group Buying we are sure to see the odd chancer here and there trying to make a quick buck, just be cautious, its always good to do some investigation before buying online.

I have checked out these site and most of the deals I had a look at was ligit, what is your favorite group buying site in South Africa?

Group buying is the latest trend to hit the Internet, and although sites like Groupon has been operating for a while the trend is really only now catching on with consumers and thus everybody it trying to get a piece of the pie with group buying sites popping up left and right.

Big news last week in South Africa was the acquisition of Twangoo, local group buying site, by Groupon, but for those that has been left out there might just be hope.

Mashable just broke the news that Google is preparing to launch its own group buying platform to compete head on with Groupon. This comes only weeks after Groupon rejected a $6 billion acquisition from Google, but the Silicon Valley company is not letting it go.

The news of Google’s group buying venture came after a confidential fact sheet was passed on from a reliable source to Mashable. In the document the new group buying service is referred to as Google Offers, describing it as new product to help potential customers and clientele find great deals in their area through a daily email.

Google Offers will function much like Groupon with users subscribing by email and receiving a daily deal in their inbox. Users will then have a specific time period to respond to the deal and when the minimum amount of users have bought the deal, it is activated.

Google has confirmed the rumors about Google Offers and that it is currently in testing phase.

Google Offers Fact Sheet

Do you make use of group buying websites? If so tell us which ones.

Groupon the world’s largest group buying site which offers consumers large discounts on products/services has just closed a recent funding round of $980 million and has already gone on a spending spree.

Groupon has acquired local South African group buying site Twangoo for an undisclosed amount. The Twangoo website will be rebranded to match that of Groupon in the next couple of months. It is still unclear whether Twangoo will switch over to groupon.co.za seeing as the domain currently belongs to another competitor local group buying site which could make drag out a domain dispute.

Groupon did not only acquire local group buying site Twangoo but they also snatched up SoSasta and Groupoer from India and Israel.

The three sites that was acquired are all regarded as leaders in group buying in their countries, and if you look at Twangoo it is clear that they are the leaders amongst the three sites in South Africa, with them offering deals almost every day for all major cities in South Africa.