Discount Codes - What's the Etiquette?

[Sendmediscounts]

Tweet

Running a voucher codes site is not as easy as it looks.

The best way to ensure you are not stepping on others toes is to only add codes that are published here or sent to you by the networks, agencies or merchants.

[Matthew Wood]

I wonder if it would help if we built a proper voucher code database on affiliates4u that people could gather via an XML feed or similar??

[Barry]

Hi Matt

it would certainly be something that I would contribute to and use

Ta

[befuddle]

No thanks. I don't want all codes published in one file for all affiliates to use including yourselves. Such a page would also be very popular on the search engines removing traffic from affiliate sites that rely on SEO and not PPC.

[ian]

excellent idea. maybe include a javascript/php/asp call to return a list of codes based on a merchant name parameter.

[renegade]

I wonder if it would help if we built a proper voucher code database on affiliates4u that people could gather via an XML feed or similar??

Would you then have to take responsibility for publishing those codes - it could be a minefield. I would stay clear.

[renegade]

In return I have also shown you the designs of the brand spanking new Shop Codes

Ah, yes, that's true - and it's looking great too.

[ian]

Would you then have to take responsibility for publishing those codes - it could be a minefield. I would stay clear.

Maybe the merchant/agency/network would be able login to maintain their own codes.

Seems a sensible cross-network solution. As long as it was easy to use for the majority of publishers, I guess take up would be quite high and a great way for merchants to publish codes for the masses.

[accelerator]

I wonder if it would help if we built a proper voucher code database on affiliates4u that people could gather via an XML feed or similar??

This sounds good to me. I would like to post discount codes on my sites, but the amount of time it would take to do this manually puts me off. If it could be automated in some way I would look seriously at using it.

Rgds

Accelerator

[befuddle]

I would like to post discount codes on my sites, but the amount of time it would take to do this manually puts me off. If it could be automated in some way I would look seriously at using it.

That's the reason I do not want this. Once it's in a feed you've got a spawn of sites all including the same content where the only requirement is knowing how to injest an xml file.

Having a site full of codes should not be given to you on a plate.

Or maybe "easyshopcodes" may come to fruition after all

[drivetowin]

Agree with befuddle on this one - once every man and his dog can produce a voucher code site in five minutes those of us who have spent years building ours may as well pack up and go do something else.

[ian]

So apart from keeping the competition down, are there any other reasons for not having a centralised source for up to date promotion codes, that makes it obvious which promotion codes are ok to use and which ones aren't?

[drivetowin]

Because when anything like this has been tried before it invariably doesn't take long before it is out of date as people neglect to update it and before you know it it is causing more problems than it solves.

[loquax]

There was a central resource system set up once before on A4U - and that didn't last beyond the first few weeks.

Personally I'd A4U concentrated on sorting out the forum/community side of things and left the networks to providing a source of codes in product feed form, or how they see fit, to their affiliates.

That way it's a network decision to make them available - and absolves A4U of any potential problems that a centric database could cause for established code affiliates.

Jason

[Cheapdvds]

if u are doing this could you also collect all the datafeeds together and put them all in one format and make sure all of the same items are matched up so price comparison is good and make the end feed available to download every night , that would be better .

but why wouldnt that happen? because its too much work and no return , just like a central voucher database.