Why Should I Pay a Coupon Site Full Commission?

That you're asking this question in and of itself is a problem. Have you not been paying attention to the world around you? The economy is bad. Consumers simply can't afford to pay full price anymore and are searching for coupons and discounts more than ever.

I can't even begin to count how many articles, reports, webinars and panels I've seen discussing this over the past few years.

So why would you not want to optimize and work closely with this very active and one of the largest segments of publishers on the market?

Yes, there are some coupon sites that are of less quality than others and yes you'll want to weed those out of your program, but there are plenty of them that are well worth your efforts and money.

Many of them will provide a lot of added value for your customers and can bring in new customers and traffic. They'll often offer lots of extra placements and prime exposure at little-no extra cost to the merchant.

There's another point to consider here. There's a very strong chance your competitors are being heavily promoted on these sites because they've realized the positive value here. Even if I can't convince you that these sites are worthwhile in general, at least I can make the argument that you have to work with them or risk losing sales to your competitors.

"Ah," you say, "but I know through my analytics that this customer came to my site from another source and THEN went looking for a coupon after seeing the coupon box on the shopping cart page. So why should I pay them for that sale at all?"

You're forgetting the one most basic and fundamental aspect of affiliate marketing. This is all about building relationships. Unlike other marketing channels where it's all very data-centric, affiliates are people. If a search campaign is costing you too much, you shut it down. If a blast of e-mails didn't send you sales, you don't send the same one again. Dealing with your affiliates is not so simple.

Yes there is a chance that the customer would have made their purchase without going through the coupon site, but do we know for sure? How do we know that the customer, after checking the coupon site and not finding a coupon for your site would have abandoned their purchase for a merchant who did have a coupon? There's no way to no for sure, but better we spend a little more on those sales than risk destroying the relationship with this publisher and losing sales.

Let's say you've ignored everything I've said here and decide to start cutting down on coupon sites. You feel that they are not really bringing you quality sales and you are paying too much for them. Well, here's what will happen:

1. The coupon site, seeing that they're not making as much money, pull back on their marketing efforts for your company.
2. Competitors start showing up instead and are likely gaining traffic that was once yours.
3. Without any listings for your site on these coupons sites, some customers searching for a coupon will abandon their shopping carts.
4. Due to the lower payout and fewer active publishers your network ranking will start to drop.
5. This makes it difficult to recruit new partners who feel they may not make money with you.

You see where I'm going with this? It can just continue to snowball after that. Granted this is an extreme, but you get my point.

Bottom line is, you absolutely want to work with these sites and maximize everything you can out of them. Consumers are shopping for coupons and discounts more than every before. Brand loyalty is slowly becoming a thing of the past as consumers will simply just look for the cheapest deal and the biggest bang for their buck.

A successful affiliate program simply can't work without these sites.