Today I am presenting another written interview with Gail Porter-Harris from Coupon Chili.
Gail-Porter Harris is one of the team behind the CouponChili.com website. They offer discounts, coupon codes, promo codes and deals on a wide variety of online retailers based in the United States. Gail has a background in Internet Marketing and is responsible for the technology retailers on the website such as McAfee, Garmin, and Symantec.
- What got you interested in starting your own coupon site?
I actually don’t run it, but was asked to join their team a while ago. I had been doing some blogger outreach work for Coupon Chili which worked out really well. I met the Coupon Chili guys at an Internet Marketing conference and we built up a really good working relationship, with me eventually joining the team this year.
- How have you gone about finding new visitors to use the coupons on your site?
Most of the time it’s about creating unique and lasting partnerships with other websites. As an example, we’ve recently released a new batch of McAfee promo codes (your readers can view those here) which give consumers 50% off on all McAfee internet security products.
In order to get new visitors to engage with those offers we will typically seek out partners who we believe would benefit from these deals. So in the case of McAfee promo codes it can be businesses which might need to upgrade their anti-virus software.
- How are most coupon codes found, are they submitted by others or do you use any tools to find them online?
Quite a few different ways to be honest. With the McAfee promo codes they actually approached us after seeing the good work that we had done with other retailers. It’s always great when that happens. In most cases though it’s about monitoring the various affiliate networks to see when new retailers join – and then creating some coupon code or promo code relevant section for that retailer on the CouponChili.com website.
We used to let other users submit coupon codes and promo codes to the website but did find that we were getting spammed quite regularly so unfortunately had to remove that element of functionality.
- How have you gone about monetizing your site and what’s working for you?
It’s all about the commissions. For every coupon or promo code that’s used, the retailer will pay us a small commission payment. At its most simple it’s pure online affiliate marketing. We have also tried to do product reviews too, but we’ve found that those don’t tend to work as well for as the coupon codes do.
- What are your future plans for 2015 and beyond?
To expand the website. I’ve been set some personal goals with the McAfee promo code campaign that I need to hit, but outside of that to expand the offers on the website and to keep giving great value to the retailers we work with… but above all our website visitors.