[amflores]

Hello Folks,

I am considering several companies to help automate my coupon website. I've seen several threads on couponfeed.net, formetocoupon, coupillia, and a couple of others. Why is OWS coupons not in this conversation? Does anyone have experience using this company? Their prices look attractive. I'm just concerned with the inner workings of how frequent/infrequent they update deals, bugs in scripts, and technical support response time.

If any of you have experience with this company, please comment. I would be really interested in hearing your feedback.

[Rexanne]

Formetocoupon dot com

[TrishaLyn]

Thanks for the recommendation, Rexanne!

For what it's worth, a lot of our subscribers have come to us from OWS being unhappy with that they're offering. I can easily set you up with a free FMTC trial, just contact me

[zawadi70]

OWS has a really good Datafeed and affordable also. The only thing that I don't like is that I cannot design a Template.. like I can with a Wordpress Site.

iCodes-us or -iCodes-uk is another good Source. The feeds for UK websites are much better though, because they are still new in the USA.

FMTC is a great datafeed, and I have tried the feeds there.. Only drawback is for someone who is new and not making a profit yet and still promoting a website. The cost will keep 99.99% of the people I have spoken to away.

If you are still designing, promoting and spending money to get off the ground.. you will have to think about what is also affordable, unless you have allot of money to start off with.

[amflores]

I am starting on a budget and figure its probably going to a minimum of 3 months to generate sufficient traffic to generate some sales. I am mainly attracted to OWS because of their pricing. My gut is telling me not to move forward with them based on the lack of customer support that I have seen from their own clients in their forum. I am also a little concerned on how fresh they keep coupon pushes. Many merchants, especially local push deals several times throughout the day. I expect my feeds to be updated and pushed at least twice a day. This is very important for a good user experience and repeat shoppers.

How often does FMTC push deals throughout the day? Do you offer local, and daily deals as well?

[zawadi70]

Originally Posted by amflores

I am starting on a budget and figure its probably going to a minimum of 3 months to generate sufficient traffic to generate some sales. I am mainly attracted to OWS because of their pricing. My gut is telling me not to move forward with them based on the lack of customer support that I have seen from their own clients in their forum. I am also a little concerned on how fresh they keep coupon pushes. Many merchants, especially local push deals several times throughout the day. I expect my feeds to be updated and pushed at least twice a day. This is very important for a good user experience and repeat shoppers.

How often does FMTC push deals throughout the day? Do you offer local, and daily deals as well?

I have not found any Affiliate Datafeed that is affordable for a coupon website- for me.
I have used OWS and the coupons/deals are pushed to the website and also you have control over that and its also automated.
I have noticed the lack of customer support also.
The only reason I have not stayed is because like u said, " 3 months to generate sufficient traffic"
I use icodes-us and still not really jumping for joy with this either, because it is still new for US Affiliates.
There is also popshops new coupon and deal api , I will try this one soon.

[TrishaLyn]

Originally Posted by amflores

How often does FMTC push deals throughout the day? Do you offer local, and daily deals as well?

Our team is constantly adding new coupons and deals to the feed and making changes to existing coupons and deals. So on average something's changing about every 15 minutes throughout the day. We do also include the local deals (e.g. Groupon, LivingSocial, etc) and daily deals (e.g. Woot, Barnes & Noble's Daily Deal, etc) for our Premium Subscribers.

Feel free to shoot me an email and I can set up a free trial for you to see for yourself.

[amflores]

Trisha,

I'm sure your service is really good. It's just not practical to pay your fees right out of the gate. However, I would be open to discussing an option where you discount your services for the first 6 months or so. This will give me time to SEO my site. There is no point in having all of these coupon deals without traffic.

[justo]

Originally Posted by amflores

However, I would be open to discussing an option where you discount your services for the first 6 months or so.

I wouldn't hold your breath But I understand where you are coming from. I had the same chicken/egg scenario, the breadth of FMTC's data was great but the cost ate up any money that would have gone into marketing; that coupled with networks paying NET 60 or longer we just couldn't sustain the cost.

On my wishlist would be comprehensive coupon data offered on a per merchant basis. Even if the price was high, say ~$10-$15 per merchant it would be worth it to me to pay for the merchants that have high rates of coupon turn over (like Zulily) and I can manually manage some of the slower vendors until it's worth it to pay for the full feed. But trying to stay on top of certain vendors by hand is just an absolute beat down.

[TrishaLyn]

While we don't have any discounts we can offer (I know, a bit ironic) we do have different service levels and it's not a long term contract, so you could always start at a smaller subscription level and ramp up as your site traffic ramps up. We can discuss specifics via email if you'd like.

[iCodes]

Originally Posted by zawadi70

I use icodes-us and still not really jumping for joy with this either, because it is still new for US Affiliates.

If you would like to send us a support ticket with more details of the main issues you are seeing i'll try my best to get them sorted asap or atleast give you a timeframe as to when they will be sorted.

Cheers

Lee

[amflores]

It's funny that Icodes chimes in. I was looking at their solution for the U.S, but I've read through several forums that the jury is still out on the quality of their U.S feed. Anyone have experience with this company?

[iCodes]

If you register a free account you can see for yourself, the paid and free subscriptions share identical data. Details here:

Lee

[k9secrets]

I am not sure I quite understand how FMTC and these other programs work. I wish I could find a sales page with a video or video demo. Trisha, can you explain the things I should do to make my site before I hire you? Will your content bring traffic without me having to? Or do I still need to do all the optimization and traffic driving? I kinda get the gist that your service feeds into my site to provide coupons but I need to understand the steps before hiring you to make my site successful. Thank you.

[iCodes]

Can't speak for any other service but we just provide the feeds and a site if required, if you don't optimize your site or do something to drive your own traffic to it then any traffic gained from the content in any feed will range from 0 to negligable.

Having a feed just gives you more time to optimize and promote your website, if you didn't use a feed then you would spend most of the day populating it by hand, or you could hire staff to populate it for you which would cost more than hiring a feed.

If all you had to do was pay a subscription fee and the site was populated and traffic sent to it, plus made a profit, then the service wouldn't be available because you wouldn't be needed :-)


Lee

[TrishaLyn]

Originally Posted by k9secrets

I am not sure I quite understand how FMTC and these other programs work. I wish I could find a sales page with a video or video demo. Trisha, can you explain the things I should do to make my site before I hire you? Will your content bring traffic without me having to? Or do I still need to do all the optimization and traffic driving? I kinda get the gist that your service feeds into my site to provide coupons but I need to understand the steps before hiring you to make my site successful. Thank you.

I have to second what Lee said - the same is true with For Me To Coupon. We only provide the content - the marketing of your site is still entirely in your hands.

[k9secrets]

Originally Posted by iCodes

If all you had to do was pay a subscription fee and the site was populated and traffic sent to it, plus made a profit, then the service wouldn't be available because you wouldn't be needed :-)


Lee

Thank you for the explanation, Lee and Trisha. I would have no idea that you would not need customers if all your service did was populate our site and send traffic to it. Without seeing how this service works it really was left to my imagination hence the reason for my question. I thought perhaps that your service fee was how you made your money.

Does it sort of feed in like yahoopipes? Are you able to give an example of how this works? I would like to get a visual. Perhaps a screenshot in a private message if possible with private info screened out if needed?

[iCodes]

The feeds service job is to populate your site, your job is to get traffic to it somehow, if the service populated and sent traffic what would be your job?.. to count the money lol

We provide an xml api for developers (can be used as a single feed to populate your database, or used live to power a site without a database)

If you are not a developer you can download a website for free which runs using the live feeds, or purchase the iCodes wp plugin or Couponpress which imports manually or automatically.

If you don't want a full website and just want to populate your site with codes / offers etc then you can just use javascript units which are as easy to install as google adsense.

Lee

[TrishaLyn]

Feel free to email me at trisha-at-formetocoupon.com and I can send you some examples of sites using our feed