Have you ever heard of web clones? It’s a term used for copycat websites. Web Apps Cloning is not about copying web designs. It’s about copying online business rules and processes. Clones ride the popularity of the cloned system until it make millions.
CityDeal, developed by the 3 German brothers (Alexander, Marc, and Oliver Samwer) of Rocket Internet in 2010, is a clone of Groupon. This clone even knocked-off Groupon in just five months from the time it was launched. It was the top deal-of-the-day site in the U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and Turkey.
Because companies can’t be patented, and trademarks apply only within the countries where they’re registered, Groupon bought CityDeal in May 2010 for 14 percent of Groupon’s shares. Rocket Internet now owns 6 percent of Groupon, a stake worth about $1 billion. The Samwer brothers are also the minds behind German auction site Alando, sold to eBay in 1999 for $54 million, and mobile content platform Jamba!, which sold to Verisign in 2004 for $273 million.
Southeast Asia is becoming a hot destination to launch cloned startups because it’s affordable to start a company here. It’s been the origin of many of Rocket Internet’s latest creations, including Wimdu, Pinspire, and Mizado.
Why Clone?
As mentioned earlier, it’s all about making money…the easier and safest way. One German founder said that while he decided to pursue his own ideas, he was advised several times to instead create a clone because “it would be safer.”
"It’s a free market out there. People can do what they want," VC Fred Wilson recently wrote. "That’s even more true globally. If you are successful, you will be cloned. That’s life. In fact, it’s a sign that you’ve made it when clones of your website, mobile app, and business start cropping up."
WebSage on Cloning
Websage Designs and Programming Services has been into online business cloning since 2011. The only difference is that all clones we did were not for us, it was for our clients who asked us to do it for them. Nevertheless, we have the experience in cloning:
- Group buying site
- Coupon site
- Buy and sell site
- Crowd sourcing site
- Crowd funding site
We’re currently on our way towards the completion of one of our clone apps – Kuneho, a TaskRabbit clone. If you need our cloning service, don’t hesitate to contact us immediately.
Hi,
I am interested in building a Classified website with the exact look, feel and back-end functionality of this website: http://www.dzooom.com
At the later stages I shall introduce some tweaks (borrowed from other websites) to be added before finalizing.
A few CSS tweaks, color scheme will then make the website unique in its own right.
Following are the steps:
STEP ONE
1. Conduct a thorough analyses of this website: http://www.dzooom.com with special attention to all the pages, categories, navigation, front & backend features and functionality etc.
2. Start building exact website like the one specified above. i.e. http://www.dzooom.com
STEP TWO
Once the exact clone of this website (front and backend) has been nearly completed.
1. I will provide 2-3 additional classified websites which we will adopt some of their special best features as regards to layout, front-end and back-end.
2. Add some more important items, categories, features, back-end functionality etc.
2. Develop custom pages to show our terms, policy, advertising, etc.
STEP THREE
1. Employ some CSS designs to tweak its look, colors, layouts, and feel so as not to look too exactly like http://www.dzooom.com while retaning its core features, structures and back-end functionality.
STEP FOUR
1. Conduct a site-wide functionality testing, spell checks, payment gateway testing, navigation, bugs etc.
STEP FIVE
1. Move and duplicate the site to other subdomains e.g dubai.xyz.com, abudhabi.xyz.com etc.
CONCLUSION
The site :
1. Must be responsive and function extremely well in all environments e.g web, mobile, ipad etc.
2. Must be easy to move to andriod and iOS platforms in the nearest future.
3. Must have a simple WYSIWYG, drag and drop backend to be administered by people with ZERO coding knowledge.
4. Ability to create sub-categories, sub-sub categories, custom fields and layouts for each category tree.
5. Must be compliant to all scripting language conventions e.g PHP5, CSS3, Javascript/JQuery, HTML etc.
6. Expired ads management system. Ability to store in archives, drafts etc.
7. Robust client ads management system and interface.
8. Featured ads, boosted ads, sticky ads, featured ad sliders etc.
NB: I am very particular about the total functionality of the dzooom.com website. Looks and feel can be slightly different but functionality 100% the same.
Timeframe: 3 Months
Tony