According to Reuters.com, Coupons.com has just raised “$200 million from institutional investors, underscoring the tremendous investor appetite for businesses that help consumers find bargains using the Internet.”
“That amount of cash places Coupons.com among a fairly elite group of privately held companies, including Groupon, the deal-a-day service aiming to go public later this year.”
“A person familiar with the situation said on Monday that the new investment round valued the company at $1 billion, with revenue of $100 million projected for this year.”
Coupons.com got 6.5 million unique visitors in April.
Anyone want to tell me that exact match domains aren’t worth a ton of dough?
Coupons.com is the PERFECT domain, a name that (probably) could be valued $100M+ if sold alone
There’s no question that but-for their domain name, they wouldn’t have gotten nearly as far along. And while companies can certainly succeed with non-generic names, having one as a gateway through which the world can enter your portal definitely helps.
Undoubtedly, the whole coupon/group buying area is here to stay. It’s always been ‘here’, but now web-based technology and software have propelled the sector’s growth to unimaginable heights.
Apple Registered At Least 50 Product Domain Names On WWDC Day!
techcrunch.com/2011/06/09/apple-registered-close-to-50-product-domain-names-on-wwdc-day/
A great generic worth a lot of gold.
generic … or very short … like OO.com 🙂
That vertical is absolutely on fire right now.
As expected, domainers tend to overemphasize the importance of the domain name 9 times in 10, but this is one of those times when the bang-on domain is a huge deal and will make a meaningful (and positive) difference, once the marketing campaign fires up.
I’m sure it already gets a shitload of typeins, but will get much, much more once its built into a relevant business offering relevant services and marketed appropriately.
I think Roy Flanders has BestDeals.com and CheapDeals.com – great brands that will go up in value significantly with the Coupons.com sale.
But at the domain only level – what is the difference between Deals.com and Coupons.com and others ?
I mean god knows we buy the restaurant.com $25, $50 and $100 “coupons” at 80%-90% off regularily.
What I am saying is the I think party is over and saturated – and coupons.com could end up being a mvp.com dotbomb – i.e. too broad
The difference between “deals.com” and “coupons.com” may seem insignificant, but it’s huge IMO.
“coupons” = 600k global exacts
“deals” = 100k global exacts
Plus coupons has a ton of other exact matches in different combos. A coupon is an actual physical object that can be used and held, I think it’s easier to build a business around a physical/printable object such as a coupon. Even if someone doesn’t use a “deal,” they can still hold onto a “coupon.” I can’t go to the supermarket/rite aid/etc. without waiting on ridiculous lines while people bust out their coupons.
Great acquisition IMO
Well said PT:
The better question I should have raised is – will Restaurant.com (which also prints coupons) be a better choice vs. the category killer Coupons.com.
Is the niche market more identifieable to the consumer vs. the home depot/lowes market.
And at that Groupon seems to be something very difficult to compete with – what else will coupons.com offer over groupon – everybody already has made groupon a household term no different that coupons.com
lets see 2 trillion dollars sitting on the sidelines from institutional investors and others looking for a home. a operating direct competitor groupon up, running and overvalued.so those that missed out are sitting there scratching their balls.a complete biz plan for a biz in a sector in the economy that is red hot in an economy that is otherwise in the toilet.
institutional accredited investors that are risk averse.does any domainer know the difference between an accredited investor and other investors? its a big big deal know your securities law.
coupons.com,deals.com any domain could do the trick.if i need to say any more groupon is worth billions and the domain is worthless.
so yes the domain coupons.com has limited value.the above outline factors supply the underlying value to this transaction.
Coupons.com already is “a relevant business offering relevant services and marketed appropriately.”
From Forbes: “Coupons.com has raised $200 million in new financing from institutional investors…Coupons.com has grown from processing 1% of the total coupon redemptions in the U.S. three years ago to 10% of all all U.S. coupons now, says Steven Boal, CEO of Coupons.com. Coupons.com has 300 employees and with its fast growth plans to add 100 more over the next six months.”
the only risk to invest in local deals’ sites is that this is a kind of service that’s very easy to duplicate and do better, so, we can’t be sure that (e.g.) Groupon can easily become “the Google of local deals”
Cut-out coupons will eventually become history. This domain name is plain and simple. It’s unambiguous. It doesn’t describe a product or service that has competing brands (e.g. vodka.com – sure, vodka, but what brand?) Coupons.com describes exactly what it is: coupons. It’s as good a type-in as there is in that regard.
“Undoubtedly, the whole coupon/group buying area is here to stay. It’s always been ‘here’, but now web-based technology and software have propelled the sector’s growth to unimaginable heights.”
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True, the dire state of the economy will also propel it far higher as Mr & Mrs Average gets squeezed from every angle and struggles to stay afloat.
Comparison sites & Coupon sites are here to stay for a VERY long time.
Yep, exact match domains are the foundation of all future businesses that survive this economic adjustment, you are ahead of everyone in your industry once you control the exact match keywords of your industry.
I think it’s great that coupon or discount websites are available and will continue.
I have stumbled across a new discount website which I think is great, especially their Facebook page, the posts are amusing. It’s called Promocodes.co.uk. Whenever I am going to make a purchase online, I try to see if there are any discounts available.
Despite Google promising to rank fewer exact match domains in in search results, they are still reaching page one with keyword stuffed content and very few backlinks, making exact match domains valuable in many people’s eyes.