« Side Hustle School

#322 - Coupon Code Site Earns Copious Profits

2017-11-18
A marketing exec sits on a domain name for 11 years before finally turning it into a profitable coupon finding site.  Side Hustle School features a new story EVERY DAY of someone who started a hustle without quitting their job. You’ll learn how they got the idea, how they overcame challenges along the way, and what the results are.  Share: #SideHustleSchoolShow notes: SideHustleSchool.comTwitter: @chrisguillebeauInstagram: @193countries

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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Support for this bought gas comes from Goldman Sachs. What Goldman Sachs expert and leading thinkers have to say about trans shaping markets, industries and the global economy stain formed with the latest insights from Goldman Sachs on the economic and market implications of covert nineteen available on our podcast at yes, a calm such covert nineteen or any of your favorite podcast platforms hey there? Welcome decided to school? My name is critical about. I am your host question You are you a coupon clipper you, like save in I've noticed that people A really into that ort, not intuited, are gonna, be honest with you to be really into this kind of thing. I was forgot to a fault. And how this obsession with free stuff for a long time, probably in my early twenties extending for quite a while in other stories about Europe
driving fifty miles to save zero dollars and fifty cents a gallon on gas? That was basically like me. You know, except I wasn't a grandpa. I was twenty years old. If there was free food involved like I would do just about. Thing, there's a travel hacking, dear ones, where I could pay three dollars to stay at these really awful motels like they would only costs thirty dollars and night or something. But I could get twenty seven dollars. And I was like awesome. This is amazing. Kyra had a bad experience like if I ordered a Pisa there's something wrong with it. I would write a detailed letter of complaint. I thought I would use whatever creative writing or copyright skills I had at the time so that letter off into the corporate headquarters, and they would usually send me back a coupon for free pizza, these days, probably for the better. I don't have much time to do that stuff, but I do know that there are a lot of coupon and deal sites out there, and you probably seen him if I can stumbled on one of them. If you were ever searching for a discount code like you check out online. There is little feel that said discount code or promo code, coupon code. Whatever you do, you have
open a new tab and type to any other name that store that merchant and discount code you'll see this entire. Our industry of hundreds, if not thousands, of sites that list all these different codes pointed out. It will go behind the scenes of one of these sites and look at how it works. What are the mechanic to this kind of thing, How can you automated, which is something that this person is John, really smart? And what kind of result can you see from it, What results in action are one sided school is all about some bring you that story just a moment quick little shot out to our sponsor. First support for this podcast comes from progressive saving money on your car insurance is easy with progressive. It's an average savings of seven hundred ninety six dollars for customers who switch and save. In fact, customers can qualify for an average of six discounts on their auto policy, with programmes
save including discounts just for starting a quota, mine or owning multiple vehicles get your quote online at progressive dot com and see how much you could be saving national average annual car insurance savings by new customer surveyed who saved with progressive in twenty nineteen discounts very and are not available in all states and situations Antonia Hypersonic side herself had been a long time coming twelve years to be precise, that's a long ago. It was when she first bought her domain name official coupon code dotcom at the time. She was in marketing for a major retailer, saw all the people making money through their Ophelia channels, and she thought what some of that, so she grabbed that domain at home cashing in on this revenue stream for herself making a coupon site that was more customer friendly than the average one which will come back to us to go along
and I tell it- was so busy with her day job that she didn't have time to do anything with that site seven years ago. She it up and worked on it briefly, but then put it down when she realized. She still didn't have time then, just last year, She happened dimension to some coworkers that she owned. The domain may basically told her. She was crazy for not building it out. Monetizing it right. This time. Antenna had also decided to strike out on her own and begin IFOR, media and e commerce in digital marketing consulting agency. She was playing to take some time off to idle ass. She transition to working for herself, so she made a plan to finally build that coupon site during her trip The first thing she had to decide on was a platform. She picked word press for the flexibility and availability of plugins after testing out a few themes. She settled on a coupon theme that had all the options she was looking for and plenty of room to tweak ass. She grew the site. She didn't customization as she bought it out further, mostly using free and paid word press plugins. She hired a friend The design, her logo for a few hundred dollars, and with that slowly start
creating a more polish brand. Now here's something important with the base website in place. She needed to import and maintain deals that didn't it. Her manually inputting data there alive of deals in discounts in coupons and promotions coming out every single day there can be a huge amount of labour that goes into keeping it update it. If you do it yourself, she had some testing. She tried a few more word press plugins, but finally she ought to pay for a feed service called F M T see, namely that originally stood for for me to compete. But now they discover the acronym Now this feed doesn't come cheap. It ranges from five hundred to two thousand dollars a month, depending on options, what you need, but the quality, deals was important, Anti Noah and the service
also comes with real people behind it were testing each offer in providing quality content, and this is a big differentiated from allow the coupon sites you see, because some of them are super cluttered and have lots of expired deals. You go looking for a coupon code and you see a bunch of them, but none of them actually work that experience next up. It was time to start applying to be an affiliate with as many retailers as possible, because you see that's how Antoinette would get paid people get the coupon code. They check out on that site using the code and she receives an affiliate commission, but this could be a challenge to she said the film industry is a chicken, retailers won't let you into their programmes. If you dont have traffic or sales on the network, but then its top to get traffic in sales without good retailers, she says it helped to be persistent to build relationships with some of the affiliate program managers. Let them know she was it's about this project and eventually she was able to get on to multiple affiliate networks. Can ours for the whole bunch of them, including commission, Junction link, share impact rate
sure assail among many more and by the women, include links to all these programmes in the show nights in case you want to try something like this yourself once she had her first affiliate partnership set up. She wanted to invest in a copyright or to help build out content for various store pages without got expensive quickly So she found a: U S based virtual assistant service. It was able to for some research and description running to them for much cheaper. Her goal was to strike the right balance between providing useful content and discounts for customers. But also rank. Well, it s YO and all without burning, through a ton of cash with all these. Someplace Antonio, it was ready to start marketing, as she did several things for that she told her friends she, U Social media, she also paid for some adds, which was initial investment that she's no doubt back on from her back running. Marketing. She also knew how to distribute press releases to media outlets that worked a little bit, but ass also decided to try a more unique marketing tactic. She ran a scholarship cunt. As for undergraduate students vote to give back and to get the word out.
Investment. One student is awarded a few thousand dollars and official coupon code get some a press Reilly of different media outlets, whenever favorite going marking services is Harrow, which is short for help. Rapporteur out heroism, exposure on a number of great websites which, as she said, provided her with a great boost in ass. He, oh, how play this site? Also school episode will help her as well for those efforts and twenty sixteen twelve. After she had first register the domain, but the first year she actively worked on it. Official coupon code cleared five figures in revenue Her initial investment has more than paid off because so far in twenty, seventeen she's actually seen a three hundred percent increase in that income. Anthony I believe that the key to generating more revenue with a hustle like this is continually updating the website with custom content, new links, new deals and new retailers. That's what he's happy with our decision to use a service that feed tell her up data that data also, since this is purely a side also for her. She thinks of this website is a long term investment
in a nice source of income for her frequent trips plus she's already on her next project fact, goods which stands for find a cure today and she describes it. It's a passion project. Its more about seeing how much money we can give away versus how much money we can make this a little. But then what we talk about here inside us or school, but I love the fact that she is able to start new projects and give back and do something it's important to her. All the while earning passive income from this combined site. It's really good. She kept that domain all those years, well really great case study here. I thought, because if you ve ever wondered how these sites work in Cotonou, little bit about. I worked, but I didn't know all the details. It interesting to see differentiate her that Anna tell a focused on in building artificial coupon code, not differentiate her in a sea of hundreds or probably thousands of these kinds of sight is no expire deals and actually good user experience. If you ve ever gone, I searched for disk
You may have had a bad experience. I certainly have gone to a site and, like all great you know, I can save you know ten percent at our eye or whatever go there and doesn't work and I go back in there's a differ, It doesn't work either and meanwhile, the user experience on us also pretty bad, because the whole thing is designed for search engines, not people, so it's almost like their sites can- Were you there under false pretences, these discounts that don't exist and in what you get there. Have nothing of value to offer. You see, of course, that's not great at all and meanwhile, the way to analyse project stands out is by creating trust. The site actually looks decent. The codes actually work. I want to take a look at the sight and right up at the top. It's like, we believe in quality over Quantum new coupons are added every hour. Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week expired Those are removed three and sixty five days a year. So thanks to that feed that database, the directory that service that she's pang she's able to make, I claim so. Obviously it is a significant investment to go that route. It seems like a really smart decision considering the vision she had.
Need to differentiate in this market of many many other sites doing something similar Toby, take a look out and I'm in a link it up in the show notes eminent link up all those different affiliate programs I mentioned as well as the service that provides the feed. If you and have starting a coupon site were discount cider deal site, let me know if you only have one. Let me now be curious to know Your experiences whatever you're up to today remember inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better, though she what are in line at side, hustle school at dot com. Three thousand two hundred and twenty two got a comment or question. Give me a call in the hustle hotline, eight thousand four hundred and forty nine hustle, four thousand eight hundred and forty four at nine seven, eight, five free love to hear from you that's for today, I'll, be back tomorrow. I'm critical about for successful.
Transcript generated on 2020-08-06.