Mistakes Daily Deal Sites Need To Avoid Making

It’s easy to see what habits make up a great daily deal site, however not quite as easy to spot the things that you need to avoid as a deal site owner in advance.In hindsight, the things to avoid become much clearer. Let’s jump right in to 10 things that you should definitely avoid doing in the daily deal industry. 1: Putting a business out of business. It’s happened before and it could happen again. A merchant doesn’t work out their numbers correctly or fails to set a maximum quantity available only to find they just got 10,000 new customers and if all 10,000 redeem the voucher, they will go out of business. It won’t look good to other vendors if you are one of the core reasons why a business shuts its doors. One of the main goals for deal sites is to help merchants – not hurt them. If you are locking in deals with businesses, be sure that you help them understand how to work out their numbers and make sure they won’t be going bankrupt anytime soon after running a deal with you. Help them choose a maximum quantity they can handle and be sure they are prepared and knowledgeable on redemption and follow-up.rnIf you source deals, this still applies to you and you still have a duty to closely examine the deals that are running through your website. 2: Running a deal on a bad product. It is always a wise thing to remember that you can’t make a bad business good by simply marketing a deal. In other words, do everything in your power to make sure you are not running a deal from a shady business who might potentially screw your customers over. One of the other main goals for deal sites is to help your customers get great deals on quality products and services, and not offer them crap services at a discount. A little search engine and social media investigation can help you spot a business that might not be suited to feature a deal on your website. Just as you don’t want to put a business out of business – you also don’t want a business to put YOU out of business and striking a deal with a merchant who intends to screw your customers out of their money might just do that. 3: Expanding too quickly. I see it all too often where folks either expand to new markets prematurely, or they simply expect their deal business to make them a millionaire (or billionaire) overnight.Watching Groupon and other companies shoot to such large levels so quickly might make you think you will follow right in their footsteps. The fact of the matter IS, however, that yes you can launch a daily deal site without investor money and quickly turn profits – running a daily deal site needs to be looked at as a real business and not a get rich overnight type of venture. Set SMART Goals (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic / relevant, and timely). You have to take into account that you are offering discounts on products and services and giving the business their cut. Needless to say, there are other industries to get involved in if you are looking for the greatest margins. 4: Breaking the law. Varying states and countries have different organizations and laws that monitor e-commerce. Just as we saw Groupon’s investigation by the UK Office of Fair Trading, and also Groupon getting in trouble for offering alcoholic beverages when not allowed. One of the negative effects of expanding too early, is that you might fail to properly research local laws. Seeking legal advice in advance is always the best recommendation. This isn’t one of those things where it is “better to ask forgiveness than permission.” 5: Starting a fight with Groupon. Kris Ashton said it right in her article discussing phrases to avoid saying in your press releases. Avoid saying things like “Move over Groupon”, or “We are going to steal Groupon’s thunder” as it is probably not the wisest (or most truthful) move to make. Same applies to Living Social.rnYes, the smaller niche or geographic specific websites are booming now, but like I discussed earlier in #3 – you’re not going to become an overnight sensation (though this isn’t always true). 6: Launching too early. If you take your website to market before it’s finished being built, or if you get one merchant to do a deal but don’t have anything lined up afterwards, you might be launching too early. This can alienate your potential customers if parts of your site aren’t finished yet, or if they come back to the site once or twice and there are no more deals. 7: Lying. Don’t tell a business you can sell 300 vouchers for them and only sell 5. Honesty and transparency are clutch. Don’t cheat, steal or step over boundaries either. 8: Wearing too many hats. If you don’t know what QuickBooks is, you might not be best suited to run your own accounting. Properly leveraging your time and resources is the way to run a smart business.rnIf you have the writing skills of a 5th grader – you should probably think about outsourcing or hiring a skilled copywriter to write your deal copy. Outsourcing, crowdsourcing, and insourcing where necessary can save you days of headaches and countless hours. 9: Ignoring social sites. There is a close connection between social media and daily deals. You can’t ignore Facebook anymore. Enough said. 10: Make up products. Some businesses just don’t want to run an offer on your deal site. Accept it. If the only way a business will run a deal on your site is if they can make up a new product or service – you probably shouldn’t feature them on your site.rnYes, bundling products and being creative on the deals that you will feature is brilliant – but this is not what I am referring to. I am stating that you shouldn’t claim to be offering 90% off of a product that has never been sold before… Who’s to say it is 90% off?