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OpenTable has now joined the ever growing list of sites that are offering some sort of daily deal or deals of the day. The OpenTable deals are, of course, focused on restaurants. The OpenTable daily deal program has some slight differences than other similar programs. In this review we will tell you how the OpenTable deals program works and how well it is performing for them.

OpenTable’s Deals Are Not Daily

The first obvious difference in the way OpenTable is approaching daily deals is that they aren’t actually doing daily deals. The Open Table deals, now active in 9 cities, are offered for a single day only, but they are only offered once weekly.

Each Tuesday evening, OpenTable reveals the deal that will be offered the following day (Wednesday). The deal will then be available for the entire day Wednesday. At midnight on Wednesday the deal will expire and no longer be available. After the deal expires, OpenTable will then preview next week’s deal as what they call a “Secret Spotlight”. Basically, they give a hint about what restaurant will be featured next, and allow users to guess the restaurant.

How Good and Unique Are The Deals?

Every OpenTable deal that we have seen has been the same $25 for $50. We also took a look at the restaurants they were signing up in Atlanta and compared them to Groupon.

We looked at 6 restaurant deals they have offered in Atlanta over the past 2 months. Of the 6 deals, Groupon had previously done a deal at 3 of them – the other 3 have not yet appeared on Groupon. Two of the 3 deals that appeared on Groupon, one in March of 2010 and one in June of 2009, were both slightly better on Groupon. One was $15 for $35 and the other was $15 for $40.

How Well is OpenTable Spotlight Performing?

I think that by any measure you would have to say that it is performing quite well. The number of deals sold for the 6 deals we looked at averaged 640, with the top deal selling 1282. At a 50% commission, that is an average of $8,000 in revenue per deal per week for a total of $416,000 in annual revenues for OpenTable in Atlanta. When you assume that their distribution list will only continue to grow and their number of cities will grow, the revenue amounts will be substantial. This is a no-brainer business for OpenTable to be in while it remains hot.

If you are a DailyDibs subscriber, we will deliver you the OpenTable deals each Wednesday.

Here is a list of active OpenTable Spotlight Cities:

There are lots and lots of local daily deal sites out there, and for the most part they look and act just like Groupon. There is certainly no shame in copying a model that has propelled Groupon to the status of fastest growing web startup of all time, but ScoutMob has taken a slightly different path. Here is how their model works.

ScoutMob Deals are Free

Unlike Groupon where you might pay $10 for $20 worth of stuff, with ScoutMob you pay nothing. You simply claim their 50% off deal and redeem it at the local business without any upfront payment. Usually, ScoutMob will have some limit on the total amount you can save. For instance, the deal may be for 50% off at a local restaurant, but your max savings is $25.

ScoutMob’s iPhone App

In addition to being different from Groupon and the rest, by offering their deals for free, ScoutMob also has a different twist on how they use their iPhone app. If you get the daily ScoutMob email, you will have one day to claim the deal – pretty standard stuff. However, if you have the ScoutMob iPhone app (now also available on Android), the deals are delivered to your phone automatically – sort of like you are automatically claiming every deal they offer. Once the deal is on your phone, you can then redeem it at the local business. To activate the deal on your phone you must be close, based on your phone’s GPS, to the business. Once activated, you will have a limited amount of time for the deal to be redeemed by the business you visit.

How Does ScoutMob Make Money?

Well free deals sounds great, and free apps with great deals sounds even better, but nobody can offer only free stuff and stay in business for long, so the question remains: how does ScoutMob make their money? Well, ScoutMob doesn’t make money charging you and me for the deals, they make their money charging the local businesses. I’m sure not every deal they do is the same, but our reports are that they charge the businesses as follows:

50 cents for each deal claimed – this is charged whether or not you redeem the deal.
$2-$3 for each deal redeemed on an iPhone

So, there you have it. Now you know how ScoutMob Works.

HowItWorks

OpenTable Spotlight: Deal of the Day from OpenTable