About MagaMart

How MagaMart is created

In January 2003, I searched the internet to look for some affiliate programs. Well, at that time I did not care much about earning commission from these programs. In fact, I was picking up PHP and MySQL programmimg so that I could learn how to create some webpages. I took many months before I managed to create an online shopping website which was www.AnythingU1.com. My first sale was magazine subscription and I was motivated. After a couple of months, I decided to concentrate on magazine subscriptions and close down AnythingU1.com.

In November 2003, I created my second website www.MagTalk.com. Initially, I'm only affiliated with a couple of selected online magazine merchants and make webpages on their magazine subscription services. After 3 months, I felt that MagTalk.com is just as common as most of the magazine affiliated websites out there. I want my website to be different and useful, so I spent a week to search the net for ideas. Finally, I came out with the idea of a price comparing site.

In January 2004, I created my magazine price compare website www.MagaMart.com. As a price comparing site, I need to add more online magazine merchants so as to be useful. Therefore I searched for more online magazine merchants including those that do not have affiliate programs. The data extracting and rearranging is a very tedious process but I still managed to get it right.

My Mission

Initially my main focus was only on price comparing which I have already accomplished. Now I'm trying to find useful information on the magazines. These info include magazine descriptions, reviews, resources and the actual website. This process is very time consuming but I believe my determination will bring me through. I would greatly appreciate anyone who is willing to share their reviews or useful resources on the specific magazine.

Challenges

As soon as I finalised my site to be a price comparing one, I started to extract data from the merchant's website. After extracting data from some websites, I realised it wasn't as simple as I initially expected. I found out that not all magazine merchants display the same title for the same magazine. Some use the same as that on the magazine covers, some use short forms, some having more or lesser characters and some have mispelled titles. This is a very time consuming and tedious work when trying to associate them in a database. Furthermore, I have to take care of my undergraduate studies and could not afford many hours on building the database. However, my strong determination pushed me to get the database done.

Infomation Sources

I searched for online magazine merchants from affiliate networks. Some online magazine merchants have also contacted me for partnership. I also got additional resources from major search engines, major directories and Open Directory. When talking about useful infomation, Open Directory is the place that has it. This directory is human edited which is very different from those that are paid inclusion and therefore has good quality information.