The basic question on this thread is: Do you feel that offering occasional coupons is beneficial for directories? What are those benefits or negatives? Since I recently had Rob (an0n) add his coupon mod to Authority Directory - I will go first – sorry if the post gets long – those who know me know I can be long winded. A long time ago I had the opinion that offering coupons on a directory was un-necessary for various reasons which I had reasoned through. Well am I allowed to change my mind? So what I have found is that coupons can have some of the following benefits for a directory. You can use coupons to generate inbound links to your directory because blog owners want to give their readers value and savings. To that end they will write and post on specials you may run. I did a very short test on this several months ago. NATURAL LINKING! Use them to create easier relationships with bulk submitters – ie - SEO companies. Use it to give some of your promotions special twists. Make sponsoring contests easier. You can just set up coupons for the contest winners. You can also offer specific coupons in specific places to track where conversions originate. For example here are a couple savings codes at Authority Directory for those reading this post Save $5 off the regular annual review option with code – dpsavings – first 75 submissions Save $15 off the featured annual review option with code – dpsavings – first 40 submissions As above the coupons can be set up custom for each review option or they can be set up to run through a certain date or a certain number of submissions as above. Just to balance this out a bit I also see a few negatives to offering coupons. I always thought that having a coupon box on the submission page deters submissions from those who don’t have a code to put in there. Most of the coupon mods I had seen I did not like because the coupon box seemed to always be there, but Rob had already taken this into account by making it easily removable. I also wondered if visitors get conditioned to expect a coupon savings which could also be a deterrent to submitting when no coupon is offered. Any thoughts on the pro’s or con’s of directory coupons? Your experiences with them? I intentionally left out what I think might be the best benefit, but there is an example of it in this post. Maybe you already know what it is.
Well, I just bought a bluetooth gadget online and as always when I see that coupon code box I open a new tab and search for site.com coupon code.
Recently we have seen a decline in directory submissions and the negative approach of Google making it more worst. In order to regain the reputation and trust in the clients, i feel shelling out coupons once in a while is a good strategy.
One option i like is the coupon code in my site name i.e (example only) Save $10 Of Regular Price Save When registering your site at Authority Directory Use Coupon Code: mysitename.com offer valid until 31 Dec 08 please pm details if you can do it
People are sensible when it comes to prices, mostly in these days when the whole world is affected by the global financial and economic crisis. So I think a coupon is a good tool to attract them back, or maybe to make submit more. A good place to find some directory coupons is this one: http://www.paiddirectorylist.com/directory_coupon/ If you know more, post them here.
There is a problem with your coupon code. I just submitted my blog directory as featured the deduction was made on the directory page but when It got to the pp page it was $40. Please pm me your paypal addy.
Thanks syted - pm sent I let Rob know the issue. Should be corrected soon. I would have given you some green for letting me know but it is saying I need to spread it around first
When i buy a links or any goodie online i always search for coupons first Yeah they increase the sales
I've corrected the issues in the paiddirectorylist.com coupons section and approved the submitted one. Thanks.
Thanks for the PM Swedal, all set up as per your email, also gave me a chance to test our text ad option and also optimised the two ads above into 1 allowing for the most popular to fire based on CTR. Listed in directories section, support and home pages. It is also set to the 5 you offered on each so gods be lucky and you sell them please let me know so i can remove the ad. Also not sure with above coupon link why it hits the home page ? to me if some one is fired up and wants to save I'm sending straight to the sign up page ( which is what i have set ) so if you would prefer the home page let me know.
Thanks ideadom. @ traitorworld Matt Cutts recently clarified how they value links from directories. See this thread. Hopefully this will spread around as quickly as it did when Google removed the recommendation to submit to Yahoo Dir, DMOZ, etc.
Thanks for the link snowbird! If only some positive news would spread as quickly as the doom and gloom stuff.....
Coupon mod is really useful, I too have it in bams and it did bring me good no.of submissions via dp. I don't see any con's with coupon, infact I see pro's only. If you even offer 2-3$ discount, person not making a submission does make one.