SEO-driven businesses are super fun to work on and run -- I have a few sites that rank for informational queries and thus get a decent amount of search traffic and ad revenue because of it. At scale, it can quickly become highly lucrative.<p>HOWEVER, and perhaps call me a giant wuss, but when you're at the mercy of not only an algorithm but also a savvy business, it's a pretty dangerous bet to hedge it all on search traffic.<p>Coupon codes are one of those things I could easily see appearing at the top of SERPs in no time courtesy of Google.<p>"Credit card comparisons" and other searches like it are a massively profitable keyword to rank for. But take a peek now and you'll see Google threw their hat into the ring, flipped one switch and magically appear above all organic rankings. They're doing the same thing with travel, weather, you name it. I can't sit here and argue it's unfair, it's their yard, they make the rules.<p>And truthfully, as a user, I completely applaud Google for providing these services, I love the one stop shop and trustworthy nature of their results.<p>As a marketer, I'm very, very wary to place any huge bets on any sort of long term business model relying on rankings. Should it be a tactic in your strategy? Absolutely. But diversification here is sure going to save a lot of headaches down the road.<p>But at the end of the day, as far as RetailMeNot goes, get it while it's good I suppose.
As a consumer, RetailMeNot is great. As another website that sells products for commission, it's terrible. If RetailMeNot can find a coupon that I fail to mention, that's fine.<p>But RetailMeNot also steals that last click cookie with coupons that simply do not work or are not really coupons (Check out the Amazon Free shipping "coupon" for example). That's nothing but cookie stuffing, and if it were any other smaller company doing something similar they'd probably get banned from the Amazon affiliate program.<p>Basically, imagine you as a website owner buying a product on Amazon and writing a review about it, reading the review out while piecing together a video montage that shows it off, taking some pictures of it, and compiling it all just to get a little bit of commission if someone reads and watches your review. Then the customer searches for an Amazon coupon before checking out, goes to RetailMeNot, and then gets the "Free Shipping on 35+ deal" that is not even a deal or coupon, or even a coupon that does not even work or exist. This million dollar company has stolen your effort and will get commission on that sale. It's just rotten from that viewpoint.
I remember submitting coupons on retailmenot and getting them erased. I actually remember contacting them to post coupons that could eventually help their end users and them informing me that they wouldn't post it because it's not an affiliate code and they wouldn't get paid.<p>As a user, I wasn't getting paid either just wanted to help out since the coupon I found was superior than anything they posted for that store at the time.<p>Is their mission to help users find deals or pad their affiliate revenue? If it was the latter, their reason they gave me would make sense.
"We take no stance on RetailMeNot’s business model. (We like getting coupon codes too!) We also have no idea how the company achieved its SEO dominance. The company has no doubt put a lot of work into conquering Google."<p>The answer could be simple. As far as I know, RetailMeNot was one of the original coupon aggregators. (The domain was created in 2006.) It also <i>seems</i> to concentrate on natural SEO and does not seem to be cheating. Combine that with good quality content and you have solid SERPs.
I run an SEO fueled business and it scares the crap out of me; especially as we hire our first full time employee. The fact that Google could literally shut down my business at any time keeps me up at night.<p>My business started as a hobby and has grown significantly (due to SEO ranking improvements) over the last couple years. We're now at a point where we (my wife and I) can no longer handle the volume that's coming in. Our options right now are a) hire an employee to help reduce the load or b) remain small and stagnant because Google could cut the cord any minute.<p>I'm trying like hell to find alternate traffic streams like Adwords, Facebook, Mobile, etc, but I can't quite figure out how to make a reasonable profit with them. So for now I guess I just have to take the risk. No guts, no glory.
I don't buy the "don't have all your eggs in one basket" mantra here. I get that idea if you rely on SEO and you have risky tactics, but in RetailMeNot's case, they have the best user experience and also, up to date coupons and for that reason are the best result most of the time in the vertical.<p>If this was a publicly traded company that bought links and had a site with a shoddy user experience, I'd get the argument that there's significant risk.<p>In the history of Google there are very few, if any case studies of sites that A) did the right thing B) were the best result that ended up losing significant traffic. Most of it is "yeah, we were doing this wrong, but it's still not fair..". In Rap Genius' case, they clearly did something wrong.<p>The only exception to this rule is if Google moves in on the vertical and steals traffic, which is possible with coupons - but there's a significant difference between completely destroying a vertical and impeding on it somewhat. Google has moved in on the airline tickets vertical but the businesses there are still doing just fine (Expedia, Priceline), as shown by their considerable growth in the last year+. It seems likely that if Google moved in on this vertical, it would be a similar impact.<p>In this article, there's little to describe what RetailMeNot does wrong. Yes, they are somewhat of a parasite, but in many ways they do these businesses a service by lowering purchase friction by creating an elegant experience for users. If their UX was substandard, it's possible customers would get lost and never complete their purchase - this happens time and time again, which is why CRO professionals can get hundreds of thousands of dollars to optimize a conversion funnel. In many ways, RetailMeNot is a piece of that elegant conversion funnel, so they are rewarded as an extremely profitable affiliate for that reason.<p>Disclaimer: I haven't taken the time to evaluate their link profile so there's a possibility that they are doing something risky there, but from an on-page perspective, they are the best result.
This line from RetailMeNot's S-1 is interesting:<p>"When a consumer executes a purchase on a retailer’s website as a result of a performance marketing program, most performance marketing conversion tracking tools credit the most recent link or ad clicked by the consumer prior to that purchase."<p>I thought that often it was the earliest click (subject to an expiry), and that multi-touch attribution was becoming more common: <a href="http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2282207/embracing-the-reality-of-multitouch-attribution" rel="nofollow">http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2282207/embracing-the-re...</a><p>If you're a CJ affiliate, please share any insight.
I have no clue about the SEO dynamics but I do know RetailMeNot used to be more legit and organic user generated. At some point they made a change and got coopted by companies paying to post codes. Maybe that original popularity is what gives them search result rankings.
I think businesses that are giving retail me not a commission are largely throwing their money away.<p>As described the vast majority of sales being generated are from people that have already started the purchasing process on your website and are looking for a discount coupon. Without having any hard numbers from my experience in ecommerce I think the majority of these people are going to purchase anyway, regardless of whether they find a coupon. There is a good chance the people actively trying to find a coupon have already checked out the competition and are relatively satisfied with your offering.<p>Price discrimination can be good but I don't think throwing away 10% to companies like this is the way to do it. I also dislike how they end up ranking really highly on a lot of your brand terms where I'd prefer my business, pages we control and 3rd party reviews to rank. Ideally you could get a coupon page of your own to rank well for the "x coupon" search to get the same effect without having to give up the 10% or whatever the commission level is.
The point which the article makes about Google Ventures having invested in the RetailMeNot speaks volumes. RMNs business model is absolute cash-cow until a mass of advertisers change their commission policies, which they won't as they are amongst one of their biggest affiliate partners.<p>So for Google, this is a great way for them to monetize their SEO SERPs. Invest in a company like this, get them to maintain clean SEO practices, reward them with obscenely dominant rankings against their competitors and then get the return from the IPO.<p>After IPO, wean off their reliance on Google with a push into mobile, as Google doesn't need to protect their investment any more and could disappear at any moment...<p>Pretty obvious how/why they have such dominant SEO results across practically all their markets, including arguably the second biggest market, the UK, if you ask me.
Opening popups that put the cookie in your browser, such as Amazon???<p>Am I missing something here? This is cookie stuffing, essentially! There's nothing white-hat about this at all.
I've been looking at the coupon search business recently and, while I have not done a comprehensive competitive analysis, I can tell you RetailMeNot just works a lot better than Coupons.com.<p>I was sitting outside Macy's using Coupons.com "local search" and got no Macy's coupons. Oh but they are a "featured coupon!" You have to use that category to find them. Bleah.<p>All the coupon sites are limited. But RetailMeNot isn't overtly lame. They don't pretend to do things they can't. Local search works. The mobile apps work. They stay away from stuff that would not work on mobile and that burdens the user. They suck less. That's often a winning strategy.
Its nice to see Goodsearch showing up on the board as a competitor these days. I've been working as an engineer and the primary technical SEO there for the last year and a half. Goodsearch takes this somewhat shady business model and at least tries to do some good.<p>I've been able to 5x our organic coupon traffic over the last year but you reach a certain point where the top competitor is just too entrenched. I definitely worry about this being a parasitic practice and Google has been favoring brands more and more in the SERPs. I'm surprised they are getting such a high multiple on their revenue considering the risks.
I'm always astounded at what some SEO positions can generate. Coupons.com is also worth around $1.5 billion. Or take Demand Media for example. They've been less prominent since the first Panda update hit them, specifically eHow took a beating. Their stock has languished, but their sales have continued to climb (almost $400m over the last four quarters).<p>Does anyone compile an estimate for how much revenue Google is directly responsible for generating for other sites via referrals off their search engine? I'd be curious to know how that compares to their take via AdWords and AdSense.
Great post and they are really doing it right. That amount of traffic from search is impressive. On the other hand this industry is about to die. One of the most exploited niches in affiliate marketing right now. Retailmenot actually is doing it right, but sites trying to mimic their success by generating totally bogus promo codes are rising to the top of the SERPs, dropping their affiliate cookie and profiting.
I have no doubt that affiliate networks will move into multi-click or other more dependable attribution models.<p>I would be more afraid of changes in attribution than getting slapped by Google.
Google Ventures was an investor in them.<p>Google wouldn't do that? Not so sure these days.<p>I also think that Google picks by hand the first few sites for top categories.