San Diego’s Extrabux, With a Boost From Old-Fashioned TV, Sees Online Shopping Traffic Skyrocket

Noah Auerhahn and Jeff Nobbs knew they were onto a good business idea last year, when they won the fourth annual USC technology plan competition. They were undergraduates after all, competing in a contest that was open to all graduate students, faculty and researchers on campus. Nevertheless, Auerhahn tells me that what happened yesterday was “very unexpected.”

The collegiate business partners moved to San Diego last year (after their graduations) and spent the $25,000 they won in USC prize money to improve and recently re-launch Extrabux, a retailing website that combines comparison shopping with cash back and rebate offers. “We always assumed that Cyber Monday would be a big day for us,” Auerhahn tells me. “But I couldn’t say that I expected we would be the No. 1 search term on Google Trends.”

Noah Auerhahn (left) and Jeff Nobbs
Noah Auerhahn (left) and Jeff Nobbs

The Extrabux.com website got about 83,000 Internet visitors yesterday, including some 63,000 unique visitors, according to Bob Nascenzi, who recently joined the online retailer as CEO and as a board member. Online searches for “Extrabux” on Google yesterday eclipsed searches that included keywords for such terms as “Tiger Wood accident rumors” and “Chelsea Clinton engagement,” Auerhahn says.

Nascenzi attributes the spike in traffic chiefly to a plug from old media—a televised segment on ABC’s Good Morning America about the latest tools and insider tricks for getting the best online holiday shopping deals. One of the bloggers that ABC consulted, Erin Gifford of Couponcravings.com, recommended Extrabux, describing it as website that enables online consumers to compare prices, get coupon codes, and cash back deals for specific products on their Christmas shopping lists.

Extrabux is able to provide information about

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.