Discount Voucher Code Sites - Make any money?

[Alien]

Hi all,

It seems to be pretty simple to create a discount voucher code site thesedays - get a domain name, get the traffic to it (hopefully!), populate using an affiliate ID and voucher supplier, etc, etc.

But, as there's loads of them around now, is it worth it - do they make any money/good returns in people's experiences?

 

[mat]

Like most saturated type sites you have to stand apart.

Social networking, competitions, great "come back" content.

There are to many voucher code sites to just rely on serps and longtail traffic.

I dont run one, but it seems the big players are picking up a loyal fan base through some of the above methods.

 

[Frog]

Hi all,

It seems to be pretty simple to create a discount voucher code site thesedays - get a domain name, get the traffic to it (hopefully!), populate using an affiliate ID and voucher supplier, etc, etc.

But, as there's loads of them around now, is it worth it - do they make any money/good returns in people's experiences?

Myvouchercodes makes 7 figures a month. Vouchercodes.co.uk makes a couple of hundred grand a month (estimate). discountvouchers.co.uk sends £1.75m a month makes £100k a month (estimate), promotionalcodes.org.uk and vouchercodes.com are doing pretty well - so yes there is plenty of money to be made in voucher codes.

But with that said, you're over simplifying things. Every single niche ultimately boils down to buying a domain then getting traffic to it. If you think you can do that, then sure go ahead. There are loads of voucher sites around, but if you can force your way in to the search results you can eat someone elses lunch. If you want to try, and have the cash, you can buy this to start

There are to many voucher code sites to just rely on serps and longtail traffic.

I 100% disagree with this comment. If you can rank it, you can do extremely well in any busy niche (not just vouchercodes) by simply outranking everyone else, without providing a single unique feature.

 

[dougs]

I'll tell you the numbers

As we run www.discountvouchers.co.uk I can tell you the numbers

Sales numbers are huge
Commisions are rubbish
Competition is huge

Simple problem is unless you have decent money to throw at it you will get swamped and waste your time.

MyVoucherCodes
50-100 staff
Traffic 100-200K per day mostly from organic
Revenue about £1 million per month
Profit £4 million in 2009 accounts

Vouchercodes.co.uk estimates
20-30 staff
Traffic 100K per day -20K from organic, rest from ppc and/or email
Revenue about £300K pcm
Profit......no idea but minimal depending on growth plans
Spend so far about £3 million

DiscountVouchers.co.uk
15-20 staff
Traffic 30-100K per day from organic, ppc and email
Revenues £100-300K pcm
Profit - none, actually so far huge losses
Spend so far about £2 million and plans to increase this massively

There really are no other players in the space that are growing. The next 3 players are all loosing market share and are not geared to grow.

The target of the top 3 is Groupon

My advice is find a niche where you make more per visitor.

Doug

Doug

 

[Frog]

Vouchercodes.co.uk estimates
Traffic 100K per day -20K from organic, rest from ppc and/or email

What are you basing that estimate on? Vc.co.uk are ranking 2nd for a massive amount of search terms, I would expect their organic traffic to be significantly higher than 20% of their total

 

[retired_member33]

As we run www.discountvouchers.co.uk I can tell you the numbers

Sales numbers are huge
Commisions are rubbish
Competition is huge

Simple problem is unless you have decent money to throw at it you will get swamped and waste your time.

MyVoucherCodes
50-100 staff
Traffic 100-200K per day mostly from organic
Revenue about £1 million per month
Profit £4 million in 2009 accounts

Vouchercodes.co.uk estimates
20-30 staff
Traffic 100K per day -20K from organic, rest from ppc and/or email
Revenue about £300K pcm
Profit......no idea but minimal depending on growth plans
Spend so far about £3 million

DiscountVouchers.co.uk
15-20 staff
Traffic 30-100K per day from organic, ppc and email
Revenues £100-300K pcm
Profit - none, actually so far huge losses
Spend so far about £2 million and plans to increase this massively

There really are no other players in the space that are growing. The next 3 players are all loosing market share and are not geared to grow.

The target of the top 3 is Groupon

My advice is find a niche where you make more per visitor.

Doug

Doug

Ur sure about those numbers? They seem to be a bit optimistic...

 

[Retired_member41]

Didnt you read, its his site lol

So numbers will probably be almost spot on.

I've only recently started looking at webalizer statistics for a few web sites, and they seem to get a few voucher search requests, even though they are unrelated, must be a search engine glitch, so imagine the amount of people looking for them.

I now do a quick google search everytime I see a voucher space when checking out, if you dont look you feel robbed.

 

[accelerator]

My advice is find a niche where you make more per visitor.

For the one man operation then I agree.

The question I find interesting though is from a profitability and lifestyle standpoint, is it ever really worth a one man operation expanding to an office plus lots of staff?

Rgds

 

[retired_member33]

@Caz

Well aware that its his site, just think the numbers are crap

 

[Frog]

Either some of the estimate numbers are wrong, or Mark Pearson is lying. Surely he wouldn't do that though

He says he gets 11m uniques a month so that would be 350k uniques per day, not 100-200.

Its immediately obvious dougs estimates are wrong, if MVC are doing 100-200k visits a day, then vc.co.uk can't also be doing 100.

The "nobody else growing" point is debatable We've grown from nothing to where we are now in only 6 months. I'm looking at the commissions now and since 100% of them came from organic search results, we're certainly eating into someones market share.

There are loads of holes in those numbers.

 

[Frog]

For the one man operation then I agree.

The question I find interesting though is from a profitability and lifestyle standpoint, is it ever really worth a one man operation expanding to an office plus lots of staff?

Rgds

For me, no its not. We've got half a dozen full time staff and I've not seen any of them in months. They all work from wherever they want to, and I do the same. £10m a year wouldn't make me come back to UK and run an office.

 

[wb]

The thing with voucher codes that I'm not sure everyone realises, is that most of the time you're able to go to a cashback site and get the commission back as well as the discount from a code (not sure if all provide you with active discount codes, but Quidco does when I use them).

 

[Frog]

Going back to "do voucher sites make any money", read this - http://blog.pwanderson.com/2010/02/uk-voucher-code-site-for-sale-spendlessonline-co-uk/

Some garbage tiny voucher site that never shows up in any competitive searches, still making close to 6 figures a year.

Sure if you want to build something on a shoestring budget you'll never compete with MVC or vouchercodes.co.uk, you're too late to that party. But can you make enough money to live on? Absolutely.

 

[Edwin]

I think if you were to start with an absolutely blank piece of paper and you look for every last drop of SEO tweaking and you build a site from the ground up to take advantage of the SEO potential, there could still be a niche for you. After all, the established sites (in this, as in most markets) were put together years ago, so are not necessarily as optimised as you could get starting from scratch... Of course, you'd need to be VERY good at SEO (or more likely be willing to buy in the necessary expertise...)

 

[Frog]

I think if you were to start with an absolutely blank piece of paper and you look for every last drop of SEO tweaking and you build a site from the ground up to take advantage of the SEO potential, there could still be a niche for you. After all, the established sites (in this, as in most markets) were put together years ago, so are not necessarily as optimised as you could get starting from scratch... Of course, you'd need to be VERY good at SEO (or more likely be willing to buy in the necessary expertise...)

I agree, and this is what we are doing.

It'll be interesting to see how promocodes.co.uk get on, as they're starting from nothing too, but spent $30k or so on a domain to do it from - obviously serious about competing.

 

[GreyWing]

The "nobody else growing" point is debatable We've grown from nothing to where we are now in only 6 months.

Which site is yours frog?

 

[Frog]

discountvouchers.org

 

[GreyWing]

discountvouchers.org

Not an big affiliate or voucher man, so couldn't comment. Always interested to see how sites differ.

 

[Frog]

I wasn't a voucher person either, but ultimately you can be the hunter, or the hunted. I'd rather compete with doug and mark directly, than have them cannibalise my affiliate sales

 

[Paullas]

I wasn't a voucher person either, but ultimately you can be the hunter, or the hunted. I'd rather compete with doug and mark directly, than have them cannibalise my affiliate sales

unless you have millions in bank there is no way you will be able to compete with mark or doug, unless your a secret millionaire