High quality content (and the traffic that comes with it) is king. DPReview is an incredibly popular site with 7mm uniques a month. Over the last 9 years, Phil turned his hobby site into a treasure trove of digital photography information.

And how does he monetize? Comparison shopping. In this case, there are subtle links all over the place for the co-branded CNET Shopper site.

Amazon probably has grand ambitions for DPReview, and I’m sure part of the plan is to replace CNET Shopper’s listings with its own. Amazon is probably already the largest shopping comparison engine on the net, it just doesn’t like to admit it. The ‘buy new and used from‘ pages are usually just as - if not more - comprehensive than the main shopping engines’ listings. And Amazon has been aggressively pursuing third party sellers for some time now. The company even prominently promotes new and used sellers through a module above the fold:

Best part of the program for merchants is that it’s free to list if you have a lot of products and Amazon works on a rev share basis as opposed to a per click fee.

What’s the point of this post? Amazon has been a comparison shopping player for years. The company will only become a stronger player in the market. At the ChannelAdvisor Catalyst conference, one of the Wall St. Analysts warned merchants about selling on Amazon because Amazon would be able to figure out which products sold, move into that merchant’s turf, and put the merchant out of business. I don’t buy it. Merchants should be flocking to Amazon just as much as they are flocking to Shopping.com and Shopzilla. Test. Track. If it works, great. If not, move on.