Coupon site Savings.com just got a redesign and a new board member: Mahalo CEO (and TechCrunch50 co-host) Jason Calacanis. “They’ve broken $10 million in revenue after just a couple of years,” says Calacanis, “and are crushing it in the deals space. Obviously this is a great place to be in a recession.”
The redesign is aimed at making the site more social for those virtual coupon clippers (hey, don’t laugh, we should all be trying to save more money these days) who want to just live to tell everyone they know about the great deals they found.
The site offers coupons from about 3,400 merchants, including the Gap, Restoration Hardware, and even the San Diego Zoo. The site is basically a coupon search engine, organized by brands, stores, and shopping categories. The new design is much more social—as far as a coupon site can be social. Each deal can be voted up, commented on, or shared (via Twitter, Facebook, Digg, reddit, delicious, or email). And members can submit their own deals.
Hardcore members and get reputation points based on how many coupons they vote on, how many they add, and whether or not the ones they add become popular.
There are tons of coupon sites out there, such as RetailMeNot and CouponChief. CEO Loren Bendele says he is trying to stand out from the crowd by creating a good user experience so that people stick around and want to come back instead of just keeping up bad deals or expired coupons which draw SEO traffic but little else.
Bendele expects to pull in more than $10 million in revenues this year and drive more than $200 million in sales for participating merchants. That is not a bad little business. (The company has raised $6 million in venture and angel capital, most recently in October, 2008 from US Venture Partners.
Jason did a great episode of This Week In Start-Ups with Loren talking about savings.com and just general start-up advice:
http://thisweek...-loren-bendele/
I wonder if Calacanis was going to join the board before that episode. Not sure how long those types of arrangements take to go through, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted to join after that interview. Loren certainly made Savings.com sound impressive.
In terms of traffic, they seem to be far, far behind competitors
http://alexa.co...+slickdeals.net
Does it really matter though since they’re profiting and growing? It’s a much younger site I believe, and they’ve got the killer name.
They’re behind competitors because they don’t post fake ads all over the place like other coupon sites. If you see an ad for an offer though savings.com, it’s REAL. Most of the coupon sites have fake ads all over the place–very annoying.
Anyone know exactly how the generate revenue? Where do they make their money? Regardless this is impressive.
Affiliate links
Maybe it’s early but looks like they’re struggling too:
http://alexa.co...retailmenot.com
For what its worth the other sites still have much nicer designs.
No they don’t. I like the savings.com site design much better than others. No expired trash to wade through, no fake offers, just useful info.
Fatwallet.com is the best IMO.
AAfter Search has both coupons and cashback.
I don’t see how this is any better or newsworthy than a site like http://www.dealtherapy.com for instance
After looking around on their site it is hard to believe that they have done 10 million in revenue in less then two years. I signed up for an account and by doing so I am able to submit a deal. If all the coupons are user generated finds then how are they making money. Sure the brands are there but since the deals are submitted by users they seem to be getting free online marketing. The only thing I see that can possibly be generating any income is the “partner stores” which I assume are paying for advertising.
Anybody have any thoughts?
homepage redeisgn?……….painful. sounds like a digg for coupons. site dont look anything like a social site. nice use of a natural language domain. appears the companies name is this sites only hope.
Thanks for the questions and comments. We’ll do more than $10 million in revenue this year. We’re a private company so we don’t give specifics beyond that. Our revenue this year is up 300-400% over last year and we’re excited about the accelerating growth rate. From talking with our merchants I know I’m the largest affiliate sales driver for many of them. Regarding how we make money, we get a % of the revenue we drive for our merchants.
Cool redesign! I’m really digging how coupons sites like savings.com, swoopup.com and retailmenot are making it easier to find deals, share them, etc…
Sorry, but they REALLY could have come up with a more innovative way to display all that content…
sounds like a great investment. is it publicly traded?
how do they make 10m do they charge to publish the coupon?
“Bendele expects to pull in more than $10 million in revenues this year and drive more than $200 million in sales for participating merchants. ”
Sounds like they charge about ~5% commission
The links out to the sites they have coupons for are affiliate links. They don’t charge anything, almost every major retailer has such a program that anyone can join. They get a percentage commission on each sale.
Jason Calcanis is a genius. If you’ve never seen him speak, highly recommended. He just tells it how it is. Sometimes he makes people cringe because he’s brutally honest–but he’s usually right.
Lot’s of typos in this post!
How does this compare with purely community driven (at least I hope) deal sites/forums such as slickdeals.net, fatwallet.com?
I prefer both of these over Savings. Each has a very strong forum community feel – like an “Us vs. Them” type of environment.
I’m sure Savings has deals, but it seems way too corporate. I won’t bookmark it.
There are several coupon sites. A few are good too. We’re differentiating ourselves by focusing on quality of the deals. The biggest complaints we saw in the online coupon space were 1) the deals don’t work and 2) it’s hard to find the deals. So we invest heavily in QA to check all our deals on a regular basis and we pull a deal down if it doesn’t work or if it is a bad deal. We also have a large team that works directly with the merchants and negotiates for better deals. This gives us exclusive deals and special promotion rights with major merchants like Apple, Gap, Home Depot, HP, Travelocity, Expedia, etc. As the affiliate industry tightens up (which is happening) and people are no longer allowed to scrape deals from others, this exclusivity will be a huge advantage.
Also, our interface is meant to surface the best deals quickly. I like sites like slickdeals and fatwallet too, but many people don’t want to page through the forums and read all the details. Our popularity contest surfaces the best deals quickly and, we believe, appeals to a broader audience. It also keeps everything very pure. The #1 deal on our site is the most popular. We may make money off of it, we may not, but the community decides what is the best.
I don’t get it- how is this not just a poorer imitation of retailmenot.com?
http://trends.g...ot.com&sa=N
So why is this more social? When I read article title, I thought you would dig into the detail a bit to highlight “social” part.
Because you can comment, like, unlike just like all the other coupons sites out there.. The members get rated etc too like all other coupons sites.. But wait You can post it to twitter, facebook etc.. WOW that is real social stuff..
The only thing “more” social about this is because Calacanis is on board?
Regarding the social components on the site, we launched with a few but you’ll see many more over the next several months. Rather than launch with all of them, we believe it is more important to test and see what the community wants. Do more of what they embrace, less of what they don’t, etc. and evolve the community over time.
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Savings.com is a great company. Extremely brilliant and motivated individuals working on the site.
I wonder who does their recruiting
Josh Stomel
oh dear, fire this douche
They riased $10million but didnt buy more than 1 server?
Site is down.
FAIL
Hi, this is Joe from Savings.com. I run the technology for the site. I’m happy to say that I can verify that the site was up the whole time. Woohoo!!! I was monitoring it all night. And yes, we have more than 1 server.
yea savings.com is pretty good.. i took a look at it after seeing it on twit .. some good stuff
Very nice design i love it.. But why they dont have a mobile app?
It’s coming…. most people still shop at their computer (by far) so we’re prioritizing there first. But good point – you have to have mobile too. Stay tuned….
I personally prefer sites like http://www.savingg.com for coupon codes. Easier to navigate and search for exactly what I’m looking for.
Oh well, these sites are a dime a dozen though, but great for this economy.
Quantcast has them at 280,000 monthly uniques.
http://www.quan...com/savings.com
Assuming 5 page views per unique and a generous $75 RPM their revenues are in the neighborhood of $100K/month. How do we get to $10 mil this year? What’s the magic business model?
i like
Wow – the site looks great and the deals are phenomenal. I liked the look before, but I love the new one!
Too bad they got kicked out of CJ a few years ago for practicing some questionable marketing terms.
like the site.
deals shmeals. I like expensive stuff and burning cash
I think they are also in the UK…site looks identical: Savoo.co.uk…perhaps that’s part of their $10M?
Does anyone know if Savings.com or any of these big coupon sites are publicly traded?
I love the new look —- the colors, the layout. Much better!!!
Does anyone have any more information on how these deals work? I am not really sure if I trust it.
Nick, there’s no trick. Next time you want to buy something online check our site for a coupon and try for yourself. Example, our deal of the week is 10% off everything at Fingerhut. If you go to their site and use the code “savingscom” you’ll get 10% off.
Yep, Savings is the real deal. Just google the product you want (for instance “apple coupon”) to buy and actually SAVE $$$. How novel:)
great deals an coupons
oh i can see there are lot of coupon site out there. how they can make money too much?