seems a very good financial advice site

In fairness, it does seem like a decent non-profit site which donates substantial funds to a number of charities - see

However, it is very UK focused and likely to be of limited value to Irish residents.
 
Hi barney

Yes it looks interesting. It's the closest to Askaboutmoney in the UK.

We might pick up some ideas for Askaboutmoney from it.

Brendan
 
I like the sound of this ...[bigger print is mine]

How exactly does the site generate revenue?

There are two main ways:
  • Affiliated Links via comparison services

    Some articles include product links or price comparison services via commercial comparison services like Moneysupermarket or Find. If these companies generate revenue (i.e. you apply for a product via them) they then give this site some of that.

    This never impacts the recommendations, doesn't ever add any cost to the product and, unlike most commercial websites, products are included even if they can't generate revenue.

    The price comparison links used are only ever included if it's the right methodology e.g. there are no credit card or home phone comparison services listed because none of them produce the best deals.

    And even if the methodology is right, they must be best of breed, e.g. Moneysupermarket's loan comparison is recommended, its life assurance comparison isn't.
  • The Provider A-Z

    This is run externally for MoneySavingExpert.com by find.co.uk. Its a yellow pages of thousands of financial websites. Each time a click is made through to one of those providers via the Directory, find.co.uk gets paid and this site gets a little of that.
If you have a comment about the ‘revenue making’ on the site or want to check out others' views, just follow this.

So how healthy are the site's finances?

As I write (August 2005) the site is very comfortably profitable, something that staggers me as, originally, I simply paid for everything and with my refusal to take ads, it was a serious expense.

This money has allowed me to build the MoneySaving team and improve the site. It's also allowing me to pay to use the net's technology to help people save cash. The , , , [broken link removed] and are just some examples and many more are on the way..

It also pays me for the time spent here and justifies me writing more articles and investing more time.

I've no intention to hide the fact it is a substantial part of my income. In fact I’d love it to make me a billionaire, providing it never compromises my ethics or cost any users a penny!

Best of all it has also allowed me to set up the MoneySavingExpert.com charity fund. And now my dream of setting up a MoneySaving charity to help teach kids about personal finance is a step closer.
 
It's interesting alright.
Although Brendan, if you were going to try going down the same route, you might have to pick a different country to focus on. UK has many more internet users than Ireland.
 
Hi

MSE is very well regarded in the UK, its entirely independent and run by a chap called Martin Lewis, if I recall correctly.

MSE has previously done a very good article on online shopping & cashback sites (including some positive commentry on )

While some of you have mentioned that you feel it's very much focused on the UK, there are infact a good number of money saving tips relevant to Irish users also ... a lot of bargins online for example.

Good as AAM is, there are a couple of ideas AAM could take onboard from MSE with due respect .. I think Brendan has already highlighted them above :)

Oh & btw, regarding umop3p!sdn's comment on the fact that there are many more internet users in the UK than Ireland, this may be true but remember the benifit to AAM in this instance, is that it's not such a mature market and as such, AAM has the potential to grow a lot more market share in the Irish market & can perhaps learn, from some of the mistakes make in the UK :)

Cheers


G>
[broken link removed]
 
Martin Lewis has been on a few tv shows too - great character, I thought everyone knew about his site!
 
Re: seems a very good financial advice site

i am a uk resident ,and i have no financial interest in this site at all ,i found information on it in the sunday times ,but as i said it seems very good to me anyway,im hoping to hear soon that INW will soon demutalise but whats another year
 
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