We now are officially overloaded on deals.
Ever since Groupon has been shown to be worth (in Google’s greedy eyes) somewhere north of $6 billion, and Amazon propelled LivingSocial into the bigtime with free $10 on anything in the store … everyone and his dog is doing deals:
We have deal sites to show us the “best deal sites.” We have services to aggregate all the deals from all the sites into one local view. We have Canadian deal sites. We have deal of the day trackers.
We officially have deal madness. Deal deafness and blindness are sure to follow. (Just like banner blindness came soon after display advertising hit the web.)
There’s a couple reasons why:
- Deals are too popular
Deals are so ubiquitous that they’re no longer remarkable. OK, another great deal from Groupon? Another great price from LivingSocial? Yawn. There’ll be a new one tomorrow. Maybe I’ll do that one. 
Deals aren’t deals anymore
Just like in retail, where 50% off is the new 30% off, there are so many companies scrounging for deals that the deals they dig up are not really deals.For example, check out this travel deal I found in my inbox last week. You can find “deals” like that every day of the week on Kayak and Expedia and a thousand other travel sites. If you think that’s a deal, you probably think the posted rate on the back of the hotel room door bears any relationship based in reality to the actual price you pay.
Deals are dead.
By which I mean, if you’re looking for a business to go into and create significant value, don’t pick this one. The value has been created and distributed already. There’s nothing left for you.
Find a new wave.