Published January 19th, 2009
in Popular Sites Series.
This is December 2008 revision of the Popular Coupon sites list. You can find the previous revision of the list here.
The change in rating shows the difference compared to November results. This list currently has 30 sites - one less than in November. It is a big day for retailmenot.com who for the first time takes position #1 (it moved from #3 to #2 exactly 12 months back).
The best performer is couponwinner.com (15.12%), who also moves up by 2 positions, and the worst result comes again from coupons.smartsource.com (-12.76%). Enjoy the complete list below!
Published October 15th, 2008
in Popular Sites Series.
This is September 2008 revision of the Popular Coupon sites list. You can find the last month revision of the list here.
The change in rating shows the difference compared to August results. This list currently has 28 sites - one more than last month. I added couponcodes4u.com after the owner Mark emailed me earlier this month.
An interesting thing happened during the last Page Rank update. Google seem to have punished retailmenot.com, its Page Rank fell to 0. Could be just a glitch. For example couponbug.com was upgraded from PR4 to PR7 last month but this month lost all of the gain and then more.
There are 24 more coupon sites hiding in my database that didn’t meet the Alexa Rank < 100,000 requirement. Please, enjoy the list of those that made it below.
Published March 24th, 2008
in Deal Site Reviews.
Last week Yan had written about RetailMeNot’s launch of a shopping community quoting from this TechCrunch story. After reading those stories and various comments at TechCrunch, I wanted to review RetailMeNot (RMN). RMN is the first coupon site I am reviewing.
RMN certainly does not have a typical coupon website look (cluttered design) but a rather interesting look, though a bit girlish in my books ;). Users rating coupons by indicating if the coupon worked is a brilliant idea. Even though the idea carries a very small execution, the effect of the voting can be seen in Yan’s monthly coupon site ratings, with RetailMeNot at the 2nd position. Also, user’s have the option to submit coupons.
The TechCrunch article notes that RMN features about 71,000 coupons from 13,000 merchants, which sounds very impressive. The success at RMN should also be attributed for not being behind in technology. The Firefox Extension, IGoogle Gadget, Bookmarklet and Mac Widget are some good examples. RMN also uses some of the buzz features popular with websites, such as Tag Cloud, related tags etc.
Being a user driven coupon site, the quality of coupons cannot really be attributed to RMN (good or bad) but should be attributed to its users. I have used their coupons in the past and the coupon ratings there generally seem to be good (meaning, if there is a 60% or more rating, there is a bigger chance of working for you).
Continue reading ‘Coupon Site – RetailMeNot Review’
Published March 17th, 2008
in Business Social.
RetailMeNot, an Australian based coupon site that launched in October of 2006 has just officially announced that they are adding a social network portal to support the main site.
Adding a full blown network is a logical step for RetailMeNot who already largely rely on community to submit and rank coupons. The new functionality allows registered users to make friends, share coupons/deals, showcase profiles, and blog about… that is right, shopping.
Any social network is only good if there is a community to support it, and this is what will eventually be the breaking point. Nevertheless, the site is certainly a leader in such a narrow niche as coupon clipping (currently ranking 2nd) and so I would say the network has a good chance for success.
Here are some interesting traffic and financial stats from the RetailMeNot launch announcement at TechCrunch:
RetailMeNot is pushing through some amazing figures for a bootstrapped (non-funded) startup with three employees. The site averages $4 million a month in sales that are accurately recorded through affiliate channels, with only 40% of codes on the site having a direct benefit for RetailMeNot. Estimated total sales through the site are $10 million a month or approx $100 million a year. 600,000 non-affiliate clickthrus were recorded in February 2007 and 440,000 affiliate clickthrus. The site offers 71,000 coupons from 13,000 merchants and is adding 200-300 new coupons a day, 300-400 new comments per day and 9000 votes per day. Traffic and revenue grew at 20% per month through 2007. King wouldn’t tell me how much the site was making, but told me that it was profitable in seven figures.
As you can see running a popular coupon site can be a very profitable business. It is unfortunate none of that goes back to the users who help build it, and I am not talking about ad revenue profit sharing on user forums. Show us the real money! ;-)
Published March 12th, 2008
in Interesting / Other.
SEO services from Google
You might already heard the big news, Google just completed Performics acquisition after they finally obtained the EU approval. What you might not have heard yet is that now along with Performics the affiliate network Google also owns Performics the SEO consulting company which offers various services to improve your website search result rankings on… Google. More from Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land.
RetailMeNot to launch social network
I just received a note from a PR company RetailMeNot hired to promote this event. I am not allowed to share the details but in a nutshell it is a social-shopping network for coupon-conscious shoppers which expands on the community currently built around coupon ranking services and the forums offered by the coupon site. I am beta-testing the interface and will try to make a short write up when it publicly launches on March 17.
New price tracking site - PricePinx
PricePinx is a new price tracking site that launched recently. The concept is similar to PriceProtectr however it was implemented using a bookmarklet (PriceProtectr has just recently added a browser plugin). The usage is pretty simple: browse to the product page, highlight the price, click on the !pinx button and enter your email. If the price drops you will receive an alert. Very useful if the merchant you shop at offers a price guarantee, or if you just want to keep an eye on a product.
New deal aggregator - Combyo
I have been exchanging emails with Pinaki who coded the website in his spare time and will sure write about it in more details later this month. Meanwhile visit it at Combyo.com and let me know if there is any particular aspect of it that you want me to pay attention to in my future review.
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