If You Were Starting a Coupon Affiliate Site...

[m0rtal]

Would you use an aggregator for daily local deals (Groupon type deals) or would you do the traditional online coupon stuff (network aff programs, CJ, Shareasale, etc.) or would you do both? Obviously both can be done but then you're not really focused / specializing in one thing.

Of course the daily deal stuff you're mostly making money on sign ups so return visitors won't be of much value (or am I missing something here)? Whereas regular coupons people will keep coming back for different types of coupons and you'll keep getting commissions from online purchases. I have an extremely brandable domain that should work well for repeat visits so this is something to factor into the equation.

I'm curious what WFers think would be more profitable all things equal. Local deals vs. regular coupons? Personally I am leaning to the latter though for the repeat visitor value but I really don't know much about this space in the grand scheme of things so there could be a big piece of the puzzle I am missing...oh and no need to school me on competition. I know what's up.

 

[blogspotter]

Regular coupons site. But it will be a nightmare trying to rank, unless you create Niche Coupons sites.
Problem is that couponing is old as fuck, and the established sites are 12-13 yrs old.
abestweb, sitepoint forums etc have tons of tips on coupon sites.
If I get my hands on a 10 year old established coupon site for a good price, I am willing to invest tons of money to compete with the Big Boys.

The problem is with the Data feed with dead links, expired coupons etc, and I don't know how the Big boys upload it manually. Maybe VAs. formetoyou coupon has a datafeed service, but it is too expensive IMO.

Jason Rubacky might also be able to give you good tips as he is from the CPS side.

Or you may start a Retailmenot clone and blackhat the fuck out of it.
I still have some solid Coupon domains, and I also plan to start those as a new project. I do have tons of mini coupon sites though. Like i said, providing the actual coupon code is the hard part when you have 100K merchants. Most old coupon sites have relationships with the merchants who provide them with exclusive coupons.

PS: The adsense payout is often better than the affiliate commissions though, because they are a low commission business. I have several $1 clicks on normal coupon sites.

And also Coupon.com has a CPA offer now. $0.5 but pretty good for a coupon for a coupon lead, and there are a few million searches for Printable Coupons.

It is still easy to rank Micro Coupon sites, but then you need hundreds of them.
I would like to hear from anyone here running 300K page coupon sites.

Discuss...

PS: I do regret not having started it 7 years ago when I acquired a couple coupon domains. I think with 2-3 employees, It would have been doable.

 

[m0rtal]

Yeah I realize it's a bit of a pita for the feeds, plus you have to sign up to all the merchants. Formetocoupon was actually supposed to launch something where you could go directly through them for a 25% cut for them or something along those lines which would be pretty sweet. I'm not sure what the status of this is (last I heard it was in beta) as I stopped inquiring since I wasn't really committed to going ahead with this project yet at the time. My contact there was supposed to notify when it did go live but she seems a bit useless so might have to check with them on that. As for their current pricing I think it's a good thing because it has a fairly high barrier to entry. I mean $1.5k isn't that much in the grand scheme of things but you're not going to have noobs cookie cutting shit if they have to pay that every month.

Not too worried about the SEO stuff really..if I do go ahead with this, I'm going to try and really take a new twist on things / make it different and shoot for social media. I know that's easier said than done but the domain will be a big help in this area. So ya my main dilemma is which sub-niche to tackle, the rest I'll figure out later. Kind of hard to pull the brakes and change directions once you get committed to either or so I want to get it right.

RE: your PS

I'm sure there's lots of things we all regret but better now than never right?

 

[Rec8189]

Can't really target the coupons in every market out there. I would find a niche, like uhh web hosting companies, and stick with it. Not a tiny niche, big enough to attract people, but it would be better if it were smaller and always on-point then somewhat delayed and larger, know what I mean?