How to Earn Extra Cash by Sharing Online Coupons and Promo Codes

You may already use online deal and coupon sites to get discounts on your .com shopping excursions. However, did you know that you can also earn money by submitting discount and coupon codes to these sites? The following deal and coupon sites award you money when you submit promo codes to them.

Coupon Chief

This site’s “Pays 2 Share” program pays out 2% of the sale when someone uses the coupon code you submitted- and that includes you. Cashouts are possible once your account is at $25 or more. The downside with Coupon Chief is that you are limited to making up to $25 per store per month for each coupon code you enter.

Once you enter a candidate coupon code to Coupon Chief and it’s accepted, you’ll receive a message like this one:

Coupons.com

Find and submit an online coupon code on the Coupons website and you’ll earn $25 in your Paypal account. You will need to submit codes that haven’t been listed before, that aren’t limited to only one retailer or one use, and that aren’t personal referral codes. Payouts are made 30 days after coupon code submission. Additional details are provided here.

Dealspotr

This recently launched coupon site and blog offers members points-based incentives for coupon codes and deals that they submit. Those points can be redeemed for e-gift cards.

Dealspotr accepts coupon codes for any brand, not just brands already listed on its website. Also, the Dealspotr community rates submitted coupon codes and deals based on their validity, accuracy and discount amount. So, the better your submitted deals perform, the more points you are awarded. For example, here is a promo code I submitted to the site for free shipping, which earned me 56 points:

Here is a promo code I submitted to Dealspotr for free shipping at Harry & David, which earned me 56 points:

Savelex

If you share coupons and/or product deals on this site, you’ll earn “S-Dollars,” which can be exchanged for real money. Every 100 S-dollars equal 1$, and there is a monthly payout limit of $25. You earn S-dollars by either sharing information about discounted products with your Savelex friends, which earns you 10 S-dollars; alternately, you can submit coupon codes, sales and online deals to the general community and earn 25 S-dollars.

Hunting promo codes for fun and profit

So, how do you locate coupon, discount and promo codes that haven’t been listed before? Here are some covert methods for finding those elusive promo codes.

1. Join coupon and deal sites. The first thing you’ll need to do is to sign up with as many daily deal and promo code sites as possible. Big name sites include RetailMeNot, Krazy Coupon Lady, Slick Deals, CouponPro, etc. You are best advised to create a unique email account and use only that address when signing up; otherwise, your inbox will be flooded with daily notices and other marketing collateral from these companies.
2. Generate checklists of store codes. Maintain an Excel file of coupon codes you come across and to which stores these codes apply. By maintaining organization up-front, you’ll be able to quickly and easily submit codes to numerous sites.
3. Look for exclusive coupon codes. Individual deal sites often make arrangements with retailers for unique discount codes that are showcased only on their site. However, once these codes are published, they can be considered public domain and used by anybody, including another deal site. Even if the eventual credit goes back to the originator site, the big draw with promo codes is their SEO power. This is why other sites will often publish exclusive promo codes.
4. Create and/or use a deal aggregator. Many industrious affiliate marketers use or generate apps that scour the Internet and retrieve all kinds of codes and coupons for them. Such deal scraper apps are useful for quickly finding deals; one example includes the Chrome plugin DealTrunk.

Extra credit: Create your own coupon code site

What’s arguably the best way to make money from coupon and promo codes? By using them on your own affiliate website and/or blog. Here are a few reasons why:

1. SEO. You can use the lure of discounts and coupons to improve your rank in search engine results pages, which will generate more traffic to your website. This extra visibility and traffic will inevitably help you better promote and sell your products.
2. Audience loyalty. By employing promo codes as a kind of “clickbait” on your site, you create a reason for your audience to return there.  A loyal following of readers is more likely to sign up to your email list and to eventually purchase from your website. By pairing coupon codes with your affiliate products, you also provide a reason for audience members to use your website as a “one-stop shop” for their online shopping and checkout activities.
3. Retail agreements. Once you have sufficient traction on your website and/or blog, and shoppers mention your site as their referral, retailers will eventually take notice and offer you exclusive deals of your own. These exclusive deals will give you a far better profit margin than the 4-6% rate that Amazon provides. Having exclusive codes will also further improve your site’s SEO and audience loyalty, creating a positive feedback loop.

Online shoppers are becoming ever more price-conscious and coupon-savvy, and you can take advantage of this trend by finding and, in essence, selling coupon and promo codes. These codes can also be utilized on your own website and/or blog to generate extra SEO, traffic and affiliate income for you.