Launching a Deal Website: Tips for Small Business Owners

The daily deal business model is very popular among entrepreneurs in our time of thriving eCommerce and online sales. The idea of launching a deal website attracts multitude of start-ups all over the world and new deal of a day sites spring up every day. The prospect of starting your own daily deal website seems to be easy and quick money making but there are many pitfalls on the way to profitable online business. Here are some tips for small business owners who are going to create a daily deal or group buying site.

Prepare to work hard.

People may think that it is easy to run a daily deal site and all they have to do is to get a website, aggregate some deals and get income. In fact, operating a deal website is more complicated than most entrepreneurs think. Creating a website is an easy part. There are many other important tasks, including defining your niche market, building your brand reputation, establishing contacts with merchants, developing channels for distributing deals. So, just like in any other business, it takes quite a bit of work to be successful with a deal of a day website.

Research your business market.

Invest some time and money in research to figure out if you should go ahead with your business idea. Launching a business without having comprehensive information about the state of the market you are going to enter and defining the market niche for your new business is a great risk. You need to investigate if people want what you are offering; if there is a room in the market for one more business; what is the competition and what you can offer to encourage customers to choose you instead of your competitors. Daily deals is a highly competitive and dynamic industry, so obtaining the relevant market information is the key to success of your venture.

Develop your marketing and distribution plan.

Running a daily deal business is a complex job that involves expanding your distribution channels, email list building, attracting merchants, advertising, getting organic traffic and many more. It is not possible to cope with everything without having a detailed plan. There is no business without customers, so distribution is the number one thing you have to work on. Think hard on how you can reach your target audience, how to grow your email list and what partnerships can you set up. An elaborate marketing strategy is another aspect that plays a significant role in building the foundation of your deal site. Explore how to drive traffic to your site, establish your marketing budget and find effective advertising channels. If you are not an internet marketing expert, consider the possibility to hire a marketing advisor or agency to develop the marketing plan for you.

And last but not least, choose software for creating your daily deal site wisely. If you want to build your own deal software you should be ready to invest a considerable amount of time and money into this project. Many entrepreneurs prefer to use ready-made scripts that allow to create clones of Groupon, Woot, Livingsocial and other popular deal websites instantly. The website building platforms, such as Getsocio, provide powerful customization features to adjust the website to your business needs and represent an affordable alternative to custom software solutions. These daily deal scripts offer built-in tools for social media integration, distributing deals and other functionality needed to setup your online business quickly and easily.