Coupon Affiliate Networks (do they exist?)
Hello Forum,
I have a project I'm working on, part of it involves offering incentives to people for participating in (hopefully fun!) activities.
The project is perfectly suited to offering coupon codes as "prizes" for the winners. (or links for that matter)
Ideally what I'd like to find is merchants who sell products that are related in some way to what I'm doing.
When I locate and find these merchants, 1/2 the time their contact form doesn't work, they ignore my inquiry or the worst case, they actually try to "sell" me these coupon codes. (I will *not* pay someone for the privilege of advertising their products!)
Establishing contact & communicating this concept seems nearly impossible.
The way I picture this working is:
A.) Contact merchant in this "mythical" directory, establish relationship.
B.) Their system cranks out N-number of single-use coupon codes along with expiration date (description & other details would be nice too, especially an icon URL of some kind)
C.) I incorporate these codes/links into my program and offer them to the winner.
You'll notice at this point there is no money exchanging hands between myself and the merchant, I do not pay them for prizes and they offer me no commission. Commission is nice, but in this case, I'd rather 100% of my commission went toward the discount price, (if I have to take a commission, because the system is geared for it, I will.)
Step B doesn't have to be single use, but it would be best. (the whole point, afterall is that these codes have some sort of value, it's not as good if you can just google for the merchants name and get the same prize because it's been shared 5,000 times)
The flip side of this, naturally, is we don't want a merchant to get stuck offering more promotional discounts than they can actually afford, forcing them to cancel before it expires. (and not telling me..)
Canceling is OK, provided I have some way of purging them from my system.
Are there networks, directories or forums of some sort where I could make contact with (related) merchants who are interested in this sort of thing?
If there isn't, how do you approach such a merchant and be taken seriously? I've tried to point out that I'm not seeking any money from them... I think they figure I'm a scam artist or that this will some how be a big complicated deal. (it isn't, all I need are some codes people can use for discounts, most shopping carts offer this anyway)
I've tried contacting web marketing agents & designers, hoping THEY could pass along the idea to their clients... no dice.
One would imagine this to work out well for people trying to sell related products.
Must I resort to searching for "free coupon sites" and offering the very same coupon codes people could get for free?
Any advice? has anyone tried to implement this? are there any existing affiliate networks that meet some of these requirements?
Any help much appreciated, thanks!
|
Linear Mode
