How to Find the Most Success in Coupon Blogging

We’ve already walked through the most basic steps of how to create a site and go live with a coupon blog of your own. The concept here is nothing new, but it’s still generating millions of dollars for bloggers, brands, and businesses every single day. Thousands of these sites will be created, but only a few will actually find success and generate a significant amount of money.

A coupon website can turn into a very popular business because everyone is looking for some sort of discount. Get started now with your very own coupon niche website by following the steps outlined above. The difference between those who find success and fail, are those who are willing to put the work in and get through the rough beginning phases.

Email Marketing

No matter what method you choose for advertising, I suggest you continue to build your email list.

This is the best way to notify people when new coupons are added. It’s also a free way to remarket your blog without spending additional money except for what was initially spent on social media and AdWords.

To get started with a mailing list, you will need to join any reliable list hosting providers, like Aweber, MailChimp, ConvertKit or Constant Contact.

As your list grows in size, so will the list hosting costs. But again, so will your site earnings and traffic.

Lastly, the best way to get people to join your mailing list is to incentivize the process and give them something for free — such as a free ebook on how to save the most money on their next shopping trip.

Bing/AdWords

SEO takes a lot of time and effort. A better way to rank at the top of the search results is to simply pay for it. The benefit of advertising on Google or Bing is that you are going to see immediate results. The bad news is that it’s going to cost you and that you will likely need to go after long tail keywords (i.e., “Huggies baby diaper coupons” vs. “baby coupons”). Also, stay away from the generic ‘coupon’ keywords. These will be expensive and heavily saturated by the competition.

Guest Blogging

Everyone wants to rank on Google, but it’s extremely difficult and time-consuming.

The top ranking factors to getting a site on the main page of Google is site content and backlinks.

Guest blogging is one of the best ways to get high-quality backlinks to your site.

Through the use of guest blogging, one can create content for another site, in exchange for a bio section at the end of the article. And often they will allow a link back to your site. Not only will guest blogging help with SEO and ranking your site higher, but it can also put your name and brand in front of thousands of new readers as well.

To learn more about how guest blogging works, be sure to check out the visual below, and also this active thread on Quora.

Social media

One of the best ways to build traffic to your website is by creating a social media page on the top networks. Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest have loads of traffic and are great for connecting with individuals who are looking for online savings.

In addition to your personal social accounts, I recommend you create one just for your coupon site as well.

Start building your brand on these social platforms, and also take advantage of their ad platforms.

Facebook is awesome for building traffic quickly. And it doesn’t cost that much money when setting up a new ad campaign and using daily spending limits. The more detailed and focused your campaigns are, the more likely you are to lower your cost per click rates and see improved performance in the process.

Also, when using social media, don’t think of it as just a one-way conversation and trying to get users from social back to your site. It’s all about following other brands and sites as well, then giving your own input and feedback.

A perfect example of this would be contributing to Reddit coupon threads, or following your favorite brands on social and updating your sites with their latest coupons and promotions. You can get more ideas on how to use social media in this reference guide from TheKrazyCouponLady.

The Marketing of Your Coupon Site

Creating a website or blog on the internet is extremely easy, and only takes a few minutes. Being that it is so easy to set up, you really can’t expect to start making money by simply going live. Instead, if you want to create and build a successful and potentially profitable blog, it’s going to come down to the time and effort you put into your site’s content and its promotion.

There are many ways you can promote your website, and I recommend trying all of them before settling on one.

And this is really important:

You no doubt have a budget to work with. Be sure to set daily limits and scale it across multiple platforms and methods. Otherwise, you can blow through your money all too easily with little to no return.

Here are some of the ways I would recommend you promote your website:

A quick tip

be sure you have a fully functional site with real content on it before applying. At this point, all you need to do is copy the coupon link code and paste it into the appropriate field on your website.

As mentioned, if you are using a coupon theme specifically designed for these types of websites, it will display the coupon in the correct spot on your website.

Save

Adding the Coupon Content

After familiarizing yourself with the WordPress platform, you can then start adding new content to your site.

Adding content to a site is pretty straightforward. But it’s even easier when using a custom theme that might be built specifically for coupon sites. The hardest challenge for coupon bloggers is to find relevant and active coupons they can add to their website.

The first recommendation is to visit some of the top coupon sites and see if they have an affiliate program you can join — mypoints.com, coupons.com, and savings.com all have affiliate programs. This will allow you to place the same coupons on your website, and make commission each time someone clicks through and makes a purchase.

In addition to joining coupon affiliate programs, you should also be looking at the type of content and the promotional coupons top coupon sites are running. Here is a short list of top coupon blogs and sites to get started with.

• Coupons.com
• RetailMeNot.com
• CouponSherpa.com
• ChameleonJohn.com
• Frugga.com
• TheCrazyCouponLady.com

Visit each one of these and find out if they have an affiliate program. If so, be sure to join their program. This should give you access to all of their coupons, banners, and links.

The Design

I’m not going to get into the design in detail because it’s been written about all over the place. Also, depending on what you would like done to your site, the options and direction you could take are limitless. However, I will provide the following advice when choosing your template:

First, research other coupon sites to see what they are doing, and gather ideas on your own website. Look at their colors, sidebars, navigation, and how they have laid out their coupons and content.

Next, choose colors that are easy on the eyes, so they don’t hurt the visitor navigating your website.

Third, avoid clutter! People tend to leave websites that seem hard to find information on. Space out your content. Create a grid layout for your coupons, and avoid adding unnecessary banners everywhere. These can distract the visitor looking to find value on your website.

In addition to everything else mentioned, spend some time and money to invest in a quality coupon WordPress theme, as this can make the whole process a lot easier.

The best way to find tips on blogging design is to visit other blogs or do a quick search on Google. You’ll find hundreds of tutorials on this topic which will provide awesome guidance for you. Again, with WordPress being used as your content manager, installing a new or custom theme to your site is just a matter of a few clicks. There is no need to hire a custom designer or learn how to code.

Setting Up a Blog

The first step is to register a domain, and this can be done by visiting a domain registrar like LCN. Head over to LCN.com, and start searching for a domain that is available. I recommend choosing one that represents your brand well and is also short and easier to remember. The longer the domain name, the harder it will be to remember. And you also don’t want your audience trying to spell out a confusing or strange domain name. Whether it’s online, through print, on the radio or even with TV ads… a short domain name that is easy to remember is the way to go.

When it comes to picking a name for your site, there is a lot to think about. It should represent coupon or money saving in some way but isn’t necessary. If you want to brand yourself as a coupon expert, you might also want to register your name as the domain. This is something many brand experts have done. Even if you don’t have a good reason for registering your name as a domain, it’s simply good to have so someone else can’t register it before you.

You can purchase hosting from most domain registrars when you are registering your domain name. I recommend starting with a shared hosting plan because it’s cheap. Make sure there’s an option to upgrade at any time.

Most hosting plans also have a free WordPress installation process – often as simple as a click of a mouse. WordPress is the most used content management platform on the internet, and now powers more than 30% of all sites. Best of all, it’s free and extremely easy to learn and use. With your domain name, hosting and WordPress now in place, you can then focus on the design of your site.

How To Start Your Coupon Blog

Today, I’ll be exploring coupon blogs, and how to start one of your own. As mentioned earlier, coupon blogs are everywhere, because they are making people a lot of money. Through the use of Google Adwords and affiliate marketing, these coupon sites are getting paid off ad clicks and every time someone uses one of the coupons on their sites.

To help you better understand what it takes to create a successful and profitable coupon blog, we will be walking through the process in detail now.

A Step by Step Guide to Creating a Profitable Coupon

Create Your Profitable Coupon Blog

Have you ever thought about why there are so many coupon blogs on the internet? Why the heck would so many brands want all of their coupons online, and why are so many people creating sites to share such content?

The answer is simple — both the advertiser/brands and site owners/bloggers are making a ton of money from it!

With all of that in mind, also consider why and how there are so many different types of blogs you can start when setting up your online business. Doing a quick search in Google will provide more than enough resources for starting a blog, doing research, and awesome ideas you can get started with.

Getting Started

My first advice is to get involved in something you are passionate about. Because only then will you put in the necessary effort even when you’re not making money. However, also make sure you have a business model associated with it, and know how to make money with a blog as well. This is something I talk about in detail all the time. So many people jump into blogging with an idea, but not actually diving into the complexities of it.

Also, in the beginning, it does require work setting up your blog and building brand awareness. So you need to be patient and stay focused. Not only that but if you are going to rely on just free traffic sources like social media and SEO — both of these will take a decent amount of time. If you are completely new to the concept of SEO and how to get traffic to your site, you can get started by reading these resources.

Once you have your website up and running, you need to find creative ways to market your niche site to build awareness. You have several options available, such as social media, paid advertising, guest blogging and email marketing. Depending on which method you focus your efforts on, this can get pricey because advertising is expensive and with more people using certain networks, you need to bid for the top spot. All of this requires planning and budgeting, which you will learn and discover over