It seems we have come up on a new era of competition for the mighty Groupon, as there is a new gladiator that has entered the arena, and the company's name is Moolala. There have been a few posts by a Moolala rep and they have lured me into checking the company out and providing a brief review. Now for those of you that aren't familiar with this particular type of MLM, it's based on coupons and discounts. You log onto the site to view the " big deal" of the day, which is a product or service somewhere around 90% off the normal price, and If you aren't interested, you don't have to do anything. If you like the offer, you buy it within a set amount of time and obviously your credit card will be charged. If there are enough people that select and make that same purchase, a link will be sent to you as with Groupon to finalize the discount. If you don't get enough bites for the offer, the deal is canceled and no one receives the discount. With Groupon almost 90% of the discounts are successful, and this has led them to the top spot in its category.

Recently however, a new player has joined the fray and it is growing rapidly while getting many people to talk about it. The company's name is Moolala, and they offer a very similar service as Groupon, however there are some plusses in how commissions are paid out. Moolala has no joining fee which sort of excludes it from being able to be labeled as a pyramid scheme. Moolala is already established as legitimate, with a decent web site, contact information, a valid address and a pretty snazzy customer service department. I got in touch with them myself in order to get a mailing address and the customer service rep in live chat took about 3 minutes to get on and chat with me, which is pretty good service in comparison to many other companies.

Moolala is led by Josh Chodniewicz, a co-founder and former CEO of art.com, and he operates alongside Dr. Tony Dale, the Chairman and Co-Founder of Karis Group and Jonathan Dale, the Chief Operating Officer, and a student of Seth Godin, an author of ten marketing books that have all been bestsellers.

Moolala’s profit-sharing system is interesting and a little bit different than Groupon, in that they reward customers with special deals while allowing local businesses to promote themselves. This allows Moolala to get commissions, which they in turn; share with the users. Anyone who joins gets an automatic lifelong two percent on commissions made by friends they refer, in addition to friends referred by friends, friends referred by friends of those friends, 5 levels deep. Below is a basic list of company info incase anyone wants to research them further.

Moolala

509 Scott Ave. suite 203;

Woodland Park, CO 80863

Phone: 1-800-680-4633

E-Mail: support@moolala.com

Founded in 2010

http://www.moolala.com/deals/providence

My primary question about Moolala and The Customer Advantage and the other Groupon MLM knockoffs that are springing up is...

How do you compete with Groupon and LivingSocial when they already have almost every merchant possible locked in?
What incentive does MooLaLa have do make the local brick and mortar merchant, restaurant, etc want to have you send out there offers - and add that extra headache of having to track another marketer promoting your products, services, deals whatever?

Moolala seems to offer the same thing as Groupon - 50-90% off of retail prices. I think Groupon is more restaurant focused, while MooLaLa seems to be more online shopping oriented. The deal I'm looking at now is "$25 for $50 Towards the Innovative Flatware at Knork.net".

That's the deal of the day ?

1) Who the hell is "Knork.net". Never heard of them. Somehow reminds me of one of the weird furniture name Ikea comes up with.

2) There's only three deals I see on the site when I pull it up. Knork, GoPhoto, and Clouds shoes. I couldn't care less about any of these.

It looks like you pay 50% of the quoted retail price to get the product. According to the info on the pages, 12 people have purchased the Flatware, and 196 have purchased the shoes...how about a 50% off beer of the month club, or maybe the bacon of the week, anything that might appeal to a guy instead of flatware and photos and bedazzled shoes?

Other than the discounts, what's the value proposition? It looks like there's a 2% "PayMatrix" that trickles down 5 levels. Typical pyramid math - if you refer 10 people and they refer 10 people then within a few levels everyone on the planet is in your 'downline'. Shoot me now, please.

I guess the only thing I like about this is that it seems to be free. My personal guess is only a fraction of a percent of the people who enroll will ever buy anything, the deals look too sparse to compete with Groupon or LivingSocial.  The company isn't listed on Npros or MLMRankings ( maybe they are just an affiliate program? )

Has anyone received a check?

"How do you compete with Groupon and LivingSocial when they already have almost every merchant possible locked in?"

The answer lies within ones intention. Certainly any adversary that steps up and decides to offer the same services to the same people at the same price will accomplish little other than a percentage of the market, while decreasing it's overall value. Moolala appears to be targeting a more mainstream product, where it is likely easier to collect interest instead of restaurants which seems to be the focus of Groupon. There is also a quality issue, and what appears to be a growing stain on Groupon's reputation. Perhaps they simply don't spend enough on cleaning up bad gossip, or perhaps its competitors spend more on staining it, but either way, it seems Groupon has a following of unhappy people. Moolala is new, fresh, and can study the mistakes and smart decisions of its predecessor, thereby building a smarter structure. Since the target audience for coupons is different, the only real competition comes with the compensation plan offered, and I am not knowledgeable enough in either one to say which has more to offer.

Certainly we know who has more experience, albeit not much more. One can argue that there is a disadvantage to being the second generation coupon company, but at the same time, it has its plusses. At least, I think it does. Moolala has a aggressive rewards program, but at the same time, Groupon could always turn the tables and expand its target audience, in fact there is a good chance it may do just that. In addition to this, as was already pointed out; Groupon has a large portion of the bigger companies on board, but in reaction to such a state, I would simply go after the competition of those very companies, so it all evens out in the end. It will come down to which market is targeted, and how good the rewards are.

lol, never thought we'd have a ninja on Repspace.

Moolala is probably going to plummet, although I am not discrediting your reasons for thinking they might succeed. I was thinking about this the other day, how when most businesses run dry, or come across competition, the better ones will come up with a way to 1-up the other, or expand their business to make it more palatable in some way. Groupon may be food focused, but they do have a great many backing companies and they are officially established. That is a pretty strong headstart in the mlm world, and they also have an established base of reps. What I feel will happen is that Groupon will simply expand their coupon selection, incorporate more products, and get bigger, leaving Moolala without much to offer. I could be wrong of course, but it doesn't seem likely that it will do much.

On the other hand, I don't know exactly how well Groupon is doing, the last source I go to in that area is the company itself. Could very well turn out that Moolala does everything right, that Groupon does wrong and the tides turn, but I just don't see that happening if Groupon has any creative pulse at all. I guess we will see what happens in the end.