How to Easily Create a Coupon Blog with WordPress

Coupon websites and blogs are one of the most heavily sought after areas of the internet. Everyone wants to save money and it’s never been easier thanks to the many coupon resources out there today. In this tutorial we are going to walk through the process of how to create a coupon site of your own, while also looking at some of the top coupon sites out there and showing you how to even make money in the process.

Before jumping into the tutorial process, let’s first discuss why coupons are all over the internet in the first place. Brands are always fighting to get more attention to themselves and to bring in new customers all the time. By offering discounts and coupons they are able to get people to their site and increase overall sales. With online coupons, this is very easy and effective since they don’t need to pay for physical marketing.

However, the benefit here to site owners is that they can start providing valuable coupons to their audience and advertising on their sites. Just to get you inspired, here are some industry numbers on how the massive coupon industry is growing and affecting overall sales and buyer confidence.

89% of the overall population uses coupons when shopping at supermarkets
Digital coupon users spend 42% more per year on groceries
150 million people are expected to use digital coupons in 2016

You’ve probably already been to a lot of different coupon sites, forums and blogs already. Many of them offer thousands of coupons, promotions and vouchers that are updated daily. You can see an example of one of these sites at in the screenshot below or at www.frugaa.com. Notice all of the brand names along the top of the site and the numbers on the right side of the page where they show over 44,000 active coupons and add nearly 100+ new coupons to the site daily.

Based off the screenshot and site above, you can now better understand how effective the world of online coupons can be for both brands and site owners. Throughout the rest of this article, we are going to walk through the process of how you can start a site of your own in the coupon niche — and maybe even make some money from it in the process!

How to Start a Coupon Blog – (Approx. 15-20 mins)

It’s easy to quickly throw a website or blog together and hope for the best, however, that’s the last thing I want you to do. Instead, take the time to read through our in-depth tutorial below and make sure the foundation for your coupon site is built properly before moving forward. This will allow you to have a great launching pad for your site and potentially get even more traffic and revenue in the weeks and months to come.

Step 1 – Choose the Best Blog Platform for Your Site

There are currently over a billion sites on the internet and more than 300 million of them are blogs. WordPress is the platform of choice when it comes to setting up a website or blog, so that is the same solution we are recommending you use as well. One of the first decisions you will need to make, is if you want to go with a free website (where you have a lot of limitations) or setting up your site with premium hosting and having complete ownership over everything you create.

Here are the two different WordPress options to choose from:

WordPress.com – A free blogging platform with a lot of limitations, and they pretty much own your site content.
WordPress.org – The free software you can setup on your site and have complete ownership over your content.

To see a detailed comparison between the two different WordPress platforms, you can click here.

Thousands of site owners and bloggers visit Blogging.org on a daily basis, and we are the authority when it comes to helping users create a site of their own. As mentioned above, we recommend all site owners get set up with their own domain name and premium hosting. This will allow you to have complete control over your site, the way it looks and whether or not you want to make money with it.

The good news is that it’s extremely low cost to set this all up. Through a partnership with Bluehost we are able to offer you 60% off their hosting plans, which brings the cost down to under $3 per month. Each hosting plan will also come with a free domain name and the installation of WordPress with just a click of a button.

To get started, all you need to do is click the image below to get started.

If you are still undecided about whether or not you want to start a site of your own, that’s completely fine. We just wanted to let you know about this option before moving forward.

Now let’s continue with the process of how to setup a coupon website or blog.

Step 2 – Pick a Coupon Niche for Your Site

It’s easy to start a website or blog, but you want to create a site that stands out from the crowd and gets traffic, you will need to try and niche down. In the coupon space this isn’t required, but it can definitely help.

A good example of this would be if you were going to create a coupon site that only focused on “online coupons” or “free shipping” promotions. You could also create a site that was focused on coupons and sales within your local city or state. By niching down, this will allow you to know your direct audience and not having to compete with huge coupon sites that might have millions of dollars in advertising budgets.

Another example of this can be seen through sites like BlackFriday.com, which focuses solely on “Black Friday”. Even though it’s only one time of the year, they’ve established themselves as the best in finding Black Friday deals for their audiences.

No matter what type of coupon site you want to create, the important thing is that you keep it updated and provide value to your audience. This is a very competitive space with a lot of money to be made, so you don’t want people to end up on your site, find expired coupons, then leave and never come back.

To learn more about what’s working in the world of coupons, be sure to check out this list of top coupon sites online. Each of them are unique in their own way and cater to their audiences differently. If you can find a way to reach your target audience and give them exactly what they are looking for, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to find success as well.

Choosing a Name for Your Coupon Blog

Another major component to launching a site, is making sure you come up with a great name. In the world of coupons, it’s all about coming up with something creative, catchy and making sure you don’t use any brand names (like Walmart, Sears or Starbucks) in your names — otherwise they might come after you and then you will have to shut your site down.

As mentioned earlier, if you decide to setup your site with premium hosting through Bluehost, you will then get a free domain at the time of set up. Domain names usually cost around $14.95 per year, so this is a nice saving on something that you will need to have anyway!

Top Coupon Sites and Blogs on the Internet Today

There are probably thousands of coupon sites on the internet today. Many of them share the same coupons and promotions, but they each deliver it to their audiences in their own unique ways. To help you with the domain name choosing process, we’ve listed some of the top money saving coupon sites on the internet today.

RetailMeNot.com
FatWallet.com
CouponSherpa.com
ChameleonJohn.com
Frugga.com
TheCrazyCouponLady.com

As you can see, some of them have the word “coupon” in their name, while others don’t. I would recommend using it in your domain, but don’t go crazy if you can’t figure out a food name.

Step 3 – Create and Customize Your Coupon Site

After coming up with the perfect domain name for your site, it’s then time to install WordPress on your server. Assuming you are going to setup your site with A Small Orange hosting, this is very easy to setup, as they have one-click WordPress installation in place.

With WordPress live and running, you can then start adding content to your site and customizing the look and feel of it as well. Through the use of WordPress Themes, you can pick and choose a new design template for your site.

Again, we can take a look at a site like Frugaa.com and see how their content is structured. Most WordPress sites will have a two-column format with content on one side, a menu bar on the other and a header section on top. In the case of Frugaa, they have a custom design in place, but we can also look around and find different templates from other sites we can use as well.

When it comes to searching for high quality WordPress themes, I highly recommend using MyThemeShop.com. There are over 100 different themes on the site, all of which are fully customizable and in comparison to other theme sites online, their quality is second to none. What’s even more exciting is that they have a low priced annual membership that allows you to access all of their themes for one low price.

Take some time to look through the other top coupon sites in the industry and how their content is laid out. Then look through the existing themes at MyThemeShop and see which matches the look and feel you are trying to achieve. To bring your site and brand to life even more, you can also create a unique logo for your site to show it’s professionalism and branding.

Step 4 – Start Creating Coupon Content for Your Blog

With your domain name, hosting and WordPress all now in place, it’s time to start adding some content to your site. Through the use of WordPress, this is very easy to setup, simply follow the screenshots below on how to start adding content to your site.

Access the WordPress dashboard and click or hover over the POSTS tab found on the left hand side menu. From here you can then click on the “ADD NEW” link.

Once the “Add New Post” window is open, you can start writing content for your site. In the screenshot below you will see where the title section and the actual post content will go. You can also click on/off the Visual/Text editors if you need to add any custom HTML. Use the menu bar above the content area to bold, italicize or customize your text content to your liking.

After you’ve written your content and everything is to your liking, click the “Publish” button to make it go live on your site.

We’ve only scratched the surface on what can be done with WordPress, and when it comes to creating content it’s dead simple. For more advanced tutorials such as how to create a link in WordPress, simply use the search bar at the top of this site.

Step 5 – How to Make Money Giving Away Free Coupons

So you are probably wondering how the heck you are going to make money with a coupon site, right? There are many way to generate revenue through your site, but the two we should focus on are Google Adsense and affiliate marketing. Google Adsense is simply an ad platform powered by Google where they place ads on your site relevant to your content. Whenever someone clicks on these ads, you make money.

Affiliate marketing, on the other hand, is the concept of getting paid a commission every time someone takes a specific action from your site. Affiliate marketing works very well in the coupon space because your audience is already in buying mode.

Coupons.com has a great affiliate program that you could join, which can connect you with huge brands like Cheerios, Crest, Ziploc and more. Another network with thousands of individual programs I recommend you join, is Shareasale.com.

For example, if you had a coupon for Target.com or Starbucks.com and you sent a visitor to their site from your site (and used your affiliate link), you could then earn a 5-15% commission on any purchases they make. Best of all, you never need to hold any inventory, process any orders or really do anything except send traffic to their sites.

To learn more about Google Adsense and making money with affiliate marketing, be sure to check out our make money blogging guide.

Step 6 – Build a Social Following and Sending Traffic to Your Blog

There are currently over two billion users spread across Twitter, Facebook and other major social networks. It’s pretty safe to say that all of them would like to be saving money with their online purchases.

This is a great opportunity for you to not only provide them with high-quality coupons, but also to grow your social media following and traffic to your site as well.

Just take a look at RetailMeNot on Twitter — they currently have over 198k million followers. That means every time they send out an update, that many people could be seeing it and heading back to their site.

The same holds true for creating Fan Pages on Facebook as well. Take a look at how CouponSherpa has over 9,700 followers on their Facebook Page — with a single post to this page they can access thousands of followers and give them a new coupon to act on, or simply a link to visit their site.

It doesn’t matter what type of coupon site you have, the important thing is that you also get it connecte with all of the major social networks as well. With over a billion users already out there, it’s up to you to make sure they find your updates on their preferred network of choice.

It’s Time to Start Your Coupon Blog Right Now!

Congrats! Over 2,500 words later and look at that… we’ve made it through the tutorial guide on how to start your own coupon site or blog. Now the rest is up to you! Take the time to run through everything we covered above and write down your own plan of attack. One of the most important things is to make sure you have a niche audience in place and that you can provide value to them. You already know they want coupons, you just need to deliver the best ones to them.

Lastly, I want to remind you about our recommended web hosting solution and the 60% off discount you can act upon right now. Click the image below to head over to Bluehost to register your hosting and don’t forget to grab your free domain name while you are over there!

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me with any comments or concerns you might have. Once your blog is live, be sure to let me know so I can check it out!