By Martin Vedris

MELBOURNE: Catch of the Day is today featuring the Asus Eee PC 1000, which is on sale now for $498. As a test, Current will report on the success of this sale tomorrow.

Catch Of The Day has the Eee PC listed for sale now and at two pm, two hours after the Asus Eee PC went up for sale, the site had already sold 200 of the units.

“Today’s product is an Asus Eee PC, it was released into the market four weeks ago,” the site’s co-owner Gabby Leibovich  told Current.com.au.

“It’s the hottest laptop on the market right now. I purchased them this morning, and today I promise you we will sell a thousand of them at $498,” Leibovich said.

Yesterday we sold a Conia DVD recorder with 160 GB storage. We only had 900 of them, we sold 900 pieces in three hours. And we do this every single day.”

Leibovich said that the strength of Catch Of The Day is the 24 hour sale period.

“The concept of Catch of the Day is very simple, we sell only one product per day. With yesterday’s deal, anyone that came after three o’clock missed out. So everyone gets excited and we get repeat customers coming in every day to see what the next day’s product is. It’s a very addictive website.”

Once the product is up for sale on the site, Catch Of The Day sends out an email to prospective consumers. While he would not disclose the exact number of people who receive that newsletter, because he didn’t want to let his competitors know, Leibovich said it was “hundreds of thousands”.

“We send out a daily email newsletter at 12 to 12.15, it goes to people who have opted in to receive our daily email newsletter,” he said. “It lets them know what the product is, but we do not announce the price on the email.”

Having such a large customer base provides the numbers required to sell 1,000 or so units of a product at a discounted price, quickly.