This is great! Is there another service like this one out there?

Thanks Mike. We’ve really tried to make it easy for small businesses to create and manage their coupons. We even provide category specific stock pictures (if you don’t have one) to make your coupon look professional. We also provide suggestions for offers to achieve various business objectives: coupons are NOT just about paying for customers, they are a powerful way to encourage consumer behavior that is favorable to your business.

We provide an API so that our coupons can be delivered with search results, overlayed on maps, sent to mobile phones, embedded in Internet yellow pages, etc.

Some futuristic ideas on the use of coupons:
1. You create an appointment in Outlook at a certain cafe and it finds the coupon for you and adds it to your appointment.
2. You take a phone-picture of the front of a restaurant, this is sent to A9, who IDs the restaurant and send you their coupon
3. Local businesses run time-sensitive “blue-light specials” with online coupons.

For an overview/demo, turn up your volume and run the video screencasts on our homepage.

One minor clarification: We charge the business a one-time ID verficiation fee of 1cent (yes a penny). We do this to prevent fraudulent coupons. By using a credit card we know who they are and they also agree to pay a fine if they create a fraudulent coupon.

One cool addition: Advertisers can even limit how many times each individual can use the coupon, if they wish to. So you can offer a great deal to get people to try your service/product. We call these “limited use” coupons, and they are typically for high-value coupons.

But there is a lot more under the surface.

Do they have the ability to aggregate coupons from other coupon listing sites? Or is it just generated from their site?

They fail my 5 second test. There should be a box on the front page where you type your zip code and get the results, including the RSS link. No passwords, no accounts, no fuss.

Gabe, I completely agree. Our site is about all aspects of online coupons, not just finding them. That’s why affiliates can place our launchpad on their sites. As you requested it takes your zip code and launches you into your local directory. Here is an mocked-up example: http://www.zixxo.com/lp/ZiXXo_Launchpad_3.html
…and it only takes 1 second

Oh I see, cool. I’d make it easier to grab the RSS feed though. I didn’t see it after a quick visual scan.

How about electronic coupons to be used for online stores or websites selling services? Will this be an option or is it strictly for physical stores?

Mike, if you register as an advertiser, you’ll see. We support online stores and you can embed the discount in the specific URL provided or provide a coupon code, but the URL embedding is recommended. With these webstores (in our vernacular) the user doesn’t click to print the coupon, they click to go to the specific URL of the item/service promoted on the advertiser’s website.

Services are also supported, there are services categories and some services coupons up there. I often use the example of an auto mechanic offering a discount, but pausing it while busy and turning it on when the schedule is empty.

That elderly couple gets around, they are also on the Andale website

I like the concept and I think it will be a great site in the future, but there’s some bugs that need to be worked out.

Right now it looks like all the coupons are national buys. For my Seattle zip code I get a pizza chain called “Mountain Mikes” which isn’t even in this area. El Chico restaurants are only in the Southeast. Somehow “Moonlit Toys” is under Health and Beauty.

The idea is interesting. I believe that if they mate this up with SMS text messages that you can show to the cashier they’ll have a hit on their hands.

Hogan has come a long way and done some nice work on this. Can other sites take feeds of the coupons or resell the inventory ?

I did not quite get the 1 cent thing, that is charged to a credit card for creation of a coupon ?

What is .50 for, the redemption or printing ? It will be interesting to see how this compares to the big coupon sites. The ease of creating coupons clearly could have an appeal to the local merchant, but it looks like all the coupons now are prints of national feeds.

Glad to see Hogan is sticking it out and pushing to make this work.

This idea really reminds me of a company I used to work at — http://www.obp.com. The open API and revenue sound like a good start for them though.

No clue how to contact you other than this michael, but google calendar is live tonight– http://www.google.com/cl2 . I’d love for you to have the scoop!

Response to Blogreader: (1) Most coupons are national at this point, but the focus is local and we prioritize local first in our directory. Give us time, we’ve been public about this for 24 hours (2) SMS is easily added through our API and as Oliver at MobileCrunch says there are 25 companies providing a transport for mobile coupons…they just need coupons (read they just need ZiXXo).

Response Ben Smith: (1) Affiliates can sell coupons to vendors and they can also publish the coupon feeds. Once we start charging, we share revenue on both sides. (2) The 1cent thing is to get a valid credit card from advertisers so we know who they are and if they make a fraudulent coupon, we can charge them a penalty; (3) For local coupons, there is no 3rd party redemption, hence no closed loop for charging on redemption. So we show the consumer a watermarked coupon and then it becomes a $.50 charge (in the future) when they click to print it. That way advertisers can also monitor their “click through” or prints. I’m happy to talk with you guys again about reselling our stuff Ben.

Site seems to be down at the moment

palo alto has had a similar service for years. not sure though how solid a plan that helps folks pay less for product is. but would be cool if somehow I knew when my favorite expensive breakfast cereal was on sale at safeway.

http://www.paloaltoonline.com/.....tion.shtml

Site is still down

i’m getting 404’s on zixxo.

probabally because this is now on digg
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006.....-at-zixxo/

oops duh you know your address heres diggs:
http://digg.com/links/Local_Coupons_via_RSS

The link is currently broke.

We’re working on addressing the “Digg-effect”. You know the story: cool web2.0 company, TechCrunch raves, Diggs grow, people overwhelm servers, company invests in more servers. Mea Culpa…but it is really cool as you’ll soon see.

I typed in the zip for Centreville, VA (20120). Under the Food category there are restaurants listed not even in the state of VA. D’Angelo’s for example. Their website doesn’t have any locations in VA. Some of the area codes for the phone numbers aren’t even VA based either. Mountain Mike’s pizza is only in CA. As you see there needs to be way more work done mapping zipcodes to the database.

I registered and the stupid website is showing me “Mountain Pizza” coupons for some place on the other side of the country and Arby’s in San Jose! Even though I told it to only show local coupons.

The bulk of the initial coupons are national. As local coupons are added they go above national coupons on the “standard” directory view. You can use the advnaced search to narrow the view to local only. We are thinking about also allowing a local only option on the standard view.

Keep in mind that filtering the RSS and email to local only doesn’t filter the standard directory view to local only. There is a lot to the app, so we apologize for areas where it isn’t as clear as it should be.

Great idea. I like the site. I think adoption will be the challenge.

Any plans of a Spanish version?

We have hopes for translation (e.g. Spanish, Japanese, Chinese) but no immediate plans…maybe start in a few months when we’ve addressed all of the other issues raised above

Backpage.com last week launched self posted coupons for the San Diego market. 300 local coupons to date and growing every day.

I suggest another variation. Consumers may place their shopping list on a site. They may place their intention to buy a major product or service also. The site might match potential buyers and sellers and suggest to sellers to offer coupons to buyers. The site might get a small fee from the seller and/or the buyer.

Another website to get latest free printable discount coupons.