Coupon/Deals Sites

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bluefusion

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Mar 10, 2009
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I was reading a post from 8 months back that indicated that coupon/deals sites were too competitive and it would be impossible to do paid traffic and make money. If that really the general consensus? If so then why do I see multiple, crappy looking sites all over paid sources? I've seen them running for at least the past 6 months so they must be working.

Am I missing something here?
 


Try to nichify it and go with less popular niches. Or go with popular niches but make it very specific, like review of only seo hostings, or hostings with biggest bandwidth. There are unlimited possibilites and as long people are looking for it, you can easily become a leader.
 
What kind of coupon/deal sites are you referring to? You mentioned multiple crappy looking sites on paid sources, so I think you're referring to deal-a-day sites like Groupon, LivingSocial, etc - correct? There are definitely a number of them in the market right now, but the space is extremely crowded. Subscribers aren't willing to get 10 daily deal emails each day, so they're going to stick to 2-3 at most.

Niches might work, but you're talking about needing a good sales force to get that done right.
 
there is a wp plug in out there (its like $400) to create daily deal sites fairly easily. Some clever advertising on PPV and Facebook could get you subscribers but your pockets will have to be deep to compete. Then a sales team to hit up the local businesses. I thought about doing it, but not willing to spend that much money. Plenty of good domains are still available -

Look for:
{City}{Niche}Deals.com

available in most major cities
 
It's because investment firms just threw groupon half a billion more to advertise their business all over the googlez.
 
justo_tx said:
Coupon sites != daily deal sites.
Click to expand...

Justo_tx has the right idea.

I think the OP is referring to sites that house coupons when you're stepping through online checkouts. Mycouponcodes.com is one. Unlike RetailMeNot, these new coupon sites operate by forcing the user to click a link to view the coupon code. The link also springs open a new browser window that drives to the shopping site with an affiliate link, thus hijacking the commission on whichever items are sitting in the user's cart. Clever, right? This revenue model is pretty effective as well, since nearly 100% of visitor traffic becomes a sale.

I run a Web 2.0 blog, and between Black Friday and Christmas, I received around 3 requests per day from similar sites to mention them. They sprung up quickly to take advantage of the online sales traffic. It's possible these sites will only see noticable revenue during that time.
 
Yes I was talking about coupon sites, not daily deal sites. I know how to run paid traffic, and I know the resources to make a good coupon site. Just curious if I'm being a coupon site noob and missing the boat on something that allows these other sites to work while the prior thread said it was almost impossible.

Thanks for the responses so far!
 
It is important to realize that the larger coupon sites such as Coupon Cabin, RetailMeNot, etc rely more heavily on placements from merchants than they do typical commission payouts for their revenue.

Generated sales for a given merchant may yield xxx/month in commissions (multiply this by hundreds or thousands of merchants), but ...

A specific placement on a category / homepage (in rotation or not) can bring in xx,xxx/day, week or month (depending on seasonality) with a flat fee / revshare or hybrid arrangement. Now multiply that :)

So traffic is vital to keep eyeballs looking at you when you are looking to ask that kind of money. Hence the willingness to accept negative operating costs in certain marketing channels when you know it will all back out in the end.

The one common denominator all the successful coupon sites have is age. I have seen some horrific looking sites that are so profitable that have been around for over 10 years. They are connected, have a decent amount of staff and are busy signing IO's 6-9 months out.

You want to compete with all that? Build something that offers at least one unique hook, and align your business model so that you can forecast all the expenses 1 year out and be willing to pay for eyeballs one way or another.

Define sales objectives that can pay for it all, and get busy with that phone ...


/2cents - Cheers
 
Thanks for the input. From what I've see if I want to compete with the big companies this is what I'll need.
 
I think it can work on a smaller scale as I have seen littler guys out there that appear to be doing well. But if I want to make this the main project, I'd need to add in your strategies for sure.
 
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