Discount deal site Offers.com said today it has closed first-round funding of $7 million as it seeks to add more staff and take on an already-crowded online coupon marketplace.
Unlike the spate of online deal site fundings we’ve seen over the last two weeks, Offers.com focuses less on “deal of the day” social or luxury buying, and more on customer-specific coupons for Main Street-type retailers like JCPenney, Kmart and the Home Depot.
Offers.com does this by offering an onsite algorithm-driven search engine, the Locker, which asks users what kinds of stores they shop at, what sorts of interests they have, and where they would most like to see deals.
It also differentiates itself by having a staff of editors that verify, rate, categorize and update all offers on a daily basis—perhaps making it more user friendly for the average coupon-cutting consumer who might be accustomed to a variety of stores and offers listed all in one place.
Competitors include CouponMom.com, Coupons.com and RetailMeNot.
The funding comes in the form of a growth equity investment from private equity firm Susquehanna Growth Equity.
Offers.com was launched in 2009 and has been self-funded and in the black since its first year. It recently debuted sister sites in Canada and United Kingdom.
The Austin, Texas-based firm said it believes its main appeal lies in its deals being completely up to date, as opposed to other sites that may offer discounts that expire or are no longer relevant.
“Nothing is more frustrating to a consumer than trying to use out-of-date, inactive or useless coupons online, which is why we spend the time and money to validate every offer on our site, ensuring a high-quality user experience,” said Steve Schaffer, founder and CEO of Offers.com.
Its expansion into new markets is part of larger plan to target consumers who want deals from relevant, big-box retailers as the recession drags on, the company told VentureBeat.
“Since launching Offers.com we have focused on quality and growing organically,” said Schaffer. “The recent popularity of local deals sites and consumers increasing use of online coupons has greatly expanded the market. However, the market remains highly fragmented, and we think the time is right to accelerate our expansion and hiring plans. And we also plan to do some acquisitions.”
The company said its first infusion of outside capital will also be used for marketing, product management, product development and the hiring of 20 new full-time employees over the next year, a 50 percent increase.
Offers.com was advised on the transaction by Pharus Securities, a boutique investment bank for internet and digital media companies.
Philadelphia-based Susquehanna is a private equity group focused on investing in growth capital and buyout opportunities in information services, internet, software and financial technology.
Next Story: GigaOm raises $2.5M, claims 10,000 Pro subscribers Previous Story: VCs get onboard with design-it-yourself offerings
To summarize an hour of dialogue, you should at some point have a product that your readers will want. You should give a lot of free content away, but even when it comes to content, you can charge for some amount, and if your content is good enough, people will pay for the premium stuff. "You can tell them about ninety percent, and they'll pay money just to get the final ten percent," so they know they have the whole picture, Clark says.
Making money blogging will not happen overnight. Sometimes it may seem like this is possible, but in reality, it takes a lot of work. "Build something that is real and something that matters to people," Rowse advises. He shared a story about how he launched a product one day and literally watched the sales roll in. It was as if he had hit a button, and the cash just started flowing, but then he realized he had been working hard up to that point for over two years, promoting the blog, writing two posts a day, doing SEO, press releases, etc. It wasn't overnight.
You're not scalable, meaning that as your audience grows and more people want to connect with you, there will be a point where it just becomes too much. You have to set boundaries, otherwise you will have no time for yourself and your family.
Eventually, you're going to have to "get real" about how many meaningful connections you can make in a day, Simone says, adding, "That's part of growing up in social media.”
When they say "no one actually wants that much authenticity," they mean that nobody cares about what you did last night, who you were with, what you had for breakfast, etc. In other words, don't show everybody everything about yourself, because you're not writing for you. You're writing for them. Be who you want to be for your audience.
Ultimately, you're blogging and using social media to sell, but you can't just go around selling to people, because they won't have it. It just doesn't work. You have to make them want to buy. "You're selling yourself," says Clark. If you provide enough value to your audience, they will want to buy what you have to offer if it expands upon the value you're already giving them. "The content is the marketing," he says.
Just having a blog is not a business. If you want it to be a business you have to treat it like one, Rowse says. This is basically an extension of number 2.
The most important of the seven points is that no one is reading your blog. As Simone says, there are hundreds of millions of blogs, and that includes blogs on your topic. You have to write it in a way that is fresh, and either entertaining or informative. The good news is that you don't need "monster traffic". You just need a good, steady core audience for advertising to do well.
Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/26 - Arrowhead Pride
Good morning! We have a full day of Kansas City Chiefs news. O-line love and praise for the running game and a shout out to DJ are ahead. There are also a few articles on the Buffalo offense and how productive they've been recently.
Debian Project <b>News</b> - July 26th, 2010
Debian Day in New York, MiniDebConf in India, Debian Installer beta1, Debian Podcast, how to attract more users?
Er, great <b>news</b>: George Lucas may be planning new “Star Wars <b>...</b>
My instinct is to shudder; most of you, I suspect, will react the same way. And let's pause here to appreciate how amazing that is. So reviled are the prequels that news of new entries in the greatest sci-fi franchise in movie history ...
bench craft company complaints
bench craft company complaints
Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/26 - Arrowhead Pride
Good morning! We have a full day of Kansas City Chiefs news. O-line love and praise for the running game and a shout out to DJ are ahead. There are also a few articles on the Buffalo offense and how productive they've been recently.
Debian Project <b>News</b> - July 26th, 2010
Debian Day in New York, MiniDebConf in India, Debian Installer beta1, Debian Podcast, how to attract more users?
Er, great <b>news</b>: George Lucas may be planning new “Star Wars <b>...</b>
My instinct is to shudder; most of you, I suspect, will react the same way. And let's pause here to appreciate how amazing that is. So reviled are the prequels that news of new entries in the greatest sci-fi franchise in movie history ...
bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints
Discount deal site Offers.com said today it has closed first-round funding of $7 million as it seeks to add more staff and take on an already-crowded online coupon marketplace.
Unlike the spate of online deal site fundings we’ve seen over the last two weeks, Offers.com focuses less on “deal of the day” social or luxury buying, and more on customer-specific coupons for Main Street-type retailers like JCPenney, Kmart and the Home Depot.
Offers.com does this by offering an onsite algorithm-driven search engine, the Locker, which asks users what kinds of stores they shop at, what sorts of interests they have, and where they would most like to see deals.
It also differentiates itself by having a staff of editors that verify, rate, categorize and update all offers on a daily basis—perhaps making it more user friendly for the average coupon-cutting consumer who might be accustomed to a variety of stores and offers listed all in one place.
Competitors include CouponMom.com, Coupons.com and RetailMeNot.
The funding comes in the form of a growth equity investment from private equity firm Susquehanna Growth Equity.
Offers.com was launched in 2009 and has been self-funded and in the black since its first year. It recently debuted sister sites in Canada and United Kingdom.
The Austin, Texas-based firm said it believes its main appeal lies in its deals being completely up to date, as opposed to other sites that may offer discounts that expire or are no longer relevant.
“Nothing is more frustrating to a consumer than trying to use out-of-date, inactive or useless coupons online, which is why we spend the time and money to validate every offer on our site, ensuring a high-quality user experience,” said Steve Schaffer, founder and CEO of Offers.com.
Its expansion into new markets is part of larger plan to target consumers who want deals from relevant, big-box retailers as the recession drags on, the company told VentureBeat.
“Since launching Offers.com we have focused on quality and growing organically,” said Schaffer. “The recent popularity of local deals sites and consumers increasing use of online coupons has greatly expanded the market. However, the market remains highly fragmented, and we think the time is right to accelerate our expansion and hiring plans. And we also plan to do some acquisitions.”
The company said its first infusion of outside capital will also be used for marketing, product management, product development and the hiring of 20 new full-time employees over the next year, a 50 percent increase.
Offers.com was advised on the transaction by Pharus Securities, a boutique investment bank for internet and digital media companies.
Philadelphia-based Susquehanna is a private equity group focused on investing in growth capital and buyout opportunities in information services, internet, software and financial technology.
Next Story: GigaOm raises $2.5M, claims 10,000 Pro subscribers Previous Story: VCs get onboard with design-it-yourself offerings
To summarize an hour of dialogue, you should at some point have a product that your readers will want. You should give a lot of free content away, but even when it comes to content, you can charge for some amount, and if your content is good enough, people will pay for the premium stuff. "You can tell them about ninety percent, and they'll pay money just to get the final ten percent," so they know they have the whole picture, Clark says.
Making money blogging will not happen overnight. Sometimes it may seem like this is possible, but in reality, it takes a lot of work. "Build something that is real and something that matters to people," Rowse advises. He shared a story about how he launched a product one day and literally watched the sales roll in. It was as if he had hit a button, and the cash just started flowing, but then he realized he had been working hard up to that point for over two years, promoting the blog, writing two posts a day, doing SEO, press releases, etc. It wasn't overnight.
You're not scalable, meaning that as your audience grows and more people want to connect with you, there will be a point where it just becomes too much. You have to set boundaries, otherwise you will have no time for yourself and your family.
Eventually, you're going to have to "get real" about how many meaningful connections you can make in a day, Simone says, adding, "That's part of growing up in social media.”
When they say "no one actually wants that much authenticity," they mean that nobody cares about what you did last night, who you were with, what you had for breakfast, etc. In other words, don't show everybody everything about yourself, because you're not writing for you. You're writing for them. Be who you want to be for your audience.
Ultimately, you're blogging and using social media to sell, but you can't just go around selling to people, because they won't have it. It just doesn't work. You have to make them want to buy. "You're selling yourself," says Clark. If you provide enough value to your audience, they will want to buy what you have to offer if it expands upon the value you're already giving them. "The content is the marketing," he says.
Just having a blog is not a business. If you want it to be a business you have to treat it like one, Rowse says. This is basically an extension of number 2.
The most important of the seven points is that no one is reading your blog. As Simone says, there are hundreds of millions of blogs, and that includes blogs on your topic. You have to write it in a way that is fresh, and either entertaining or informative. The good news is that you don't need "monster traffic". You just need a good, steady core audience for advertising to do well.
bench craft company complaints
Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/26 - Arrowhead Pride
Good morning! We have a full day of Kansas City Chiefs news. O-line love and praise for the running game and a shout out to DJ are ahead. There are also a few articles on the Buffalo offense and how productive they've been recently.
Debian Project <b>News</b> - July 26th, 2010
Debian Day in New York, MiniDebConf in India, Debian Installer beta1, Debian Podcast, how to attract more users?
Er, great <b>news</b>: George Lucas may be planning new “Star Wars <b>...</b>
My instinct is to shudder; most of you, I suspect, will react the same way. And let's pause here to appreciate how amazing that is. So reviled are the prequels that news of new entries in the greatest sci-fi franchise in movie history ...
bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints
Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/26 - Arrowhead Pride
Good morning! We have a full day of Kansas City Chiefs news. O-line love and praise for the running game and a shout out to DJ are ahead. There are also a few articles on the Buffalo offense and how productive they've been recently.
Debian Project <b>News</b> - July 26th, 2010
Debian Day in New York, MiniDebConf in India, Debian Installer beta1, Debian Podcast, how to attract more users?
Er, great <b>news</b>: George Lucas may be planning new “Star Wars <b>...</b>
My instinct is to shudder; most of you, I suspect, will react the same way. And let's pause here to appreciate how amazing that is. So reviled are the prequels that news of new entries in the greatest sci-fi franchise in movie history ...
bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints
Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/26 - Arrowhead Pride
Good morning! We have a full day of Kansas City Chiefs news. O-line love and praise for the running game and a shout out to DJ are ahead. There are also a few articles on the Buffalo offense and how productive they've been recently.
Debian Project <b>News</b> - July 26th, 2010
Debian Day in New York, MiniDebConf in India, Debian Installer beta1, Debian Podcast, how to attract more users?
Er, great <b>news</b>: George Lucas may be planning new “Star Wars <b>...</b>
My instinct is to shudder; most of you, I suspect, will react the same way. And let's pause here to appreciate how amazing that is. So reviled are the prequels that news of new entries in the greatest sci-fi franchise in movie history ...
bench craft company complaints bench craft company complaints
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