MoneySavingExpert.com
 |
|
|
Type of site
|
Finance |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | Moneysupermarket.com |
| Created by | Martin Lewis |
| Slogan(s) | CUTTING your costs, FIGHTING your corner! |
| Website | moneysavingexpert |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Launched | February 2003 |
MoneySavingExpert.com is a British consumer finance information and discussion website founded by financial journalist Martin Lewis in February 2003 with the aim of providing information and journalistic articles enabling people to save money. In September 2012 it was bought by the moneysupermarket.com group for up to £87M. in a deal which saw Lewis agree to remain as editor in chief before taking on the role of executive chairman in 2015.
The website claims that it is the UK's biggest independent money site, with 13 million unique users a month. The site aspires to have an ethical stance with the principles of being free to use with no advertisements, independent, unbiased and journalistic in all its research and money-saving articles.
The website has no advertisements for external content. The website contains affiliate links to merchants and receives a commission for each purchase made. The choice of which content to advertise is made in part based on which will generate the most money but that criterion is not used when selecting the best products to feature in articles. A small proportion of this income is donated to charity; of this, two thirds is donated to the MSE Charity, and the rest is donated to five other nominated charities by members.
It is wholly owned by the Moneysupermarket.com group, following its purchase for up to £87m in September 2012. MoneySavingExpert.com remains editorially independent, as part of the contractually binding Editorial Code.
The site's profits are thanks to affiliate payments, which can be £100 or more on the sale of financial products. In the year ending 31 October 2011, MSE had revenue of £16m and profits of £12.6m
Lewis has also caused disquiet in Affiliate Marketing circles for promoting cashback sites where the consumer gets the money for affiliate payments for themselves. This is likely to have had a substantial impact on the revenue his own site makes too.
The MoneySavingExpert franchise consists of 4 key tools:
Martin's Free Money Tips e-mail is sent to over 7 million people every week and contains a mixture of editorial articles and the best and current tips from users in the site's Forums.
...
Wikipedia