Seven years ago, I was at my first job looking for some assignments from the boss. I was having a lot of spare time considering I was given simple work that I used to accomplish very quickly.
In those days, I started a coupon blog, and later by that year, I was going through some bloggers’ websites and got the idea to start an affiliate coupon website & now it’s really successful attracting 100k visitors every month.
Here, I’m sharing with you how I built a successful coupon website and how you can start a coupon website business and make it profitable as soon as possible.
How to Start a Professional Affiliate Coupon Website (Step-by-step) #
1. Setup a Domain & Hosting #
Choose a catchy name for the domain and register with domain registration service providers.
Having a “coupon” in the domain name sometimes makes it easy to remember and helps in SEO as well.
There are many companies that provide domain registration viz. GoDaddy, bigrock, 1and1, Namecheap are reputed among many.
Once the domain is registered, purchase the hosting space from any leading web hosting provider viz. Bluehost, Hostgator, InMotion, Siteground, etc.
If you’re looking at scale in a short time, you can start with VPS which gives you a lot of freedom in setting up your website and is lightning-fast when it comes to website page speed. I personally suggest using VPS from either digital ocean or Linode. The only thing is that if you set up VPS for the first time it demands some professional skills.
Signup with a digital ocean or Linode and get $100 credits.
2. Choose the coupon website CMS platform #
There are many options you can choose to start with, popular ones are;
- WordPress (Recommended)
- PHP Script – (Custom or ReadyMade)
- Ruby ( on Rails)
- JS Framework (Ex: Angular )
Here are some of the things I suggest to consider while choosing the CMS for your coupon website.
If you don’t need a lot of customization and fancy features then you can go with PHP Script.
In many cases, especially for beginners, without any doubt, WordPress is the best choice.
WordPress Based Coupon Website #
WordPress is an open-source CMS that allows you to install any standard WordPress coupon theme to start a professional-looking coupon website. It’s easy & very economical to start a website with many functionalities already built-in.
A couple of best coupon themes compatible with WordPress are CouponORB, Couponer, Comre, Clipper, Couponize, etc.
Alternatively, there are a few PHP based CMS especially developed for Coupon Website. These also can be used. But, the customization efforts are more compared to WordPress.
3. Publish the Coupon & Deals on your coupon website #
Here is the most critical part of the process. You need to configure stores, categories, etc on your website and start publishing coupons & deals.
You can find coupons & deals from various sources, such as affiliate networks, merchants, newsletters, social media, etc.
Alternatively, you may subscribe to an automated coupon data feed API to get all your merchant & category masters published using API. Coupon API enables publishing coupons & offers data automatically on your website. There are 800+ merchants with 26000+ coupons you get on subscription.
With this, within a few hours, you can have coupons & deals for hundreds omerchantsnt, fully automatically
4. Create a publisher account with networks and stores. #
There are mainly two types of associations with merchants; Affiliate partners with direct stores, such as Amazon.in Associate Affiliate Program, Flipkart Affiliate Program, Snapdeal Affiliate Program, etc.
Affiliate partners through various affiliate networks, such as Optimise (OMG), iCubesWire, Payoom, VCommission, DGM, etc. These networks first check your website before approving your application. So, make sure you have some content available on your website.
Here is the complete guide of popular affiliate networks in 2024 with minimum payout, products, payment methods, and many more.
5. Convert all links to affiliate deep links. #
Once, you have got the coupon & deals content on your website and affiliate network & direct merchant affiliate accounts created, you need to convert all merchant’s links to affiliate deep links.
These affiliate deep links are required to track the sale and be eligible to earn commission from networks.
There is a service to convert all your links to smart affiliate deep links effortlessly.
6. Setup Coupon Website Marketing Approaches #
6.1 SEO for Your Coupon Website #
Set up meta title & description based on keyword research. Choose the keywords that have low or medium competition with a decent amount of volume and map the metadata accordingly.
Example: Flipkart coupon code has a high volume of search and high competition compared to Flipkart discount code. Therefore, do keyword research and map the keywords with medium competition.
Also, target long-tail keywords to map in the metadata.
Example: Flipkart offers on camera, amazon coupon on the gift voucher, etc.
Submit the website sitemap to google, integrate webmaster, and google analytics to see the traffic reaching your website.
6.2 Social Media Marketing of a Coupon Website #
Social media is a very important tool to reach the last mile. The target audience is within reach by using your own profile and inviting people to like, follow your pages. In social media, I suggest creating pages with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ to begin with, and keep it updated and engaging with users.
6.3 Email marketing for your Coupon Website #
Although, the click-through rate is low, yet another powerful tool to spread your voice till the last mile. There are lots of agencies containing a bulk email address. Hire them to send out emails on your behalf.
Also, add an option on your website to enable the subscription of your newsletter and that enables you to collect email addresses.
Track the visitors, transactions, conversions, and earnings in your affiliate account dashboard. That’s All.
Conclusion #
There are literally thousands of ways to make money online with affiliate marketing, But I would suggest putting your efforts into a unique affiliate business model like coupon cashback websites.
The e-commerce business industry is growing massively year by year and coupon website business is mostly dependent on e-commerce business.
Your opportunity for growth and scaling up your coupon business will exponentially increase with the retail e-commerce business.
Don’t get disappointed if you don’t see good results initially. Google Search Engine takes time to get your website to appear in people’s eyes. However, it depends on how much effort you put into organic SEO.
To know more refer this 5 guides on cashback coupon marketing strategies to grow your affiliate business. I wish you good luck and hope that this article will help you start a coupon site. Cheers!!
