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What It's About
A coupon code website without expiration dates!
Business Model
Affiliate
Skills Required
SEO & Affiliate Savvy
Complexity
Medium
Profit Potential
Medium
Words of Wisdom
The differentiator of Official Coupon Code: in a sea of hundreds, probably thousands of these sites: no expired deals.
It’s frustrating to constantly find deals that don’t work, and you feel like you've been lured there under false pretenses without anything of value offered to you. Meanwhile, the way that Antonella’s projects stand out is by creating trust. As she said, “We believe in quality over quantity. New coupons added every hour 24/7. Expired deals removed 365 days a year.”
Fun Fact
Antonella created her website almost complete from the road and the ocean— both in Antarctica and the Arctic. Once she even had to update the website from her cell phone in the Sahara desert. She got really good, really quickly, at making changes using the mobile Wordpress interface!
Notes from Chris
Episode 322
Antonella Pisani’s side hustle has been a long time coming. 12 years to be exact—that’s when she first bought the domain OfficialCouponCode.com. At the time she was working in marketing for a major retailer and saw all the people making money through their affiliate channels. She had grabbed the url because she wanted to cash in on this revenue stream herself and make a coupon site that was more customer friendly than average—meaning no expired deals or codes that don’t work. You may have encountered that frustration... But she was so busy with her day job that she didn’t have time to do anything with the domain. Then, last year she happened to mention to some coworkers that she owned the domain and they basically told her she was crazy for not building it out and monetizing it. Right around this time Antonella had also decided to strike out on her own and start Eyeful Media, an e-commerce and digital marketing consulting company. She was planning to take some time off to travel as she transitioned to working for herself, so she made a plan to finally build the site during her trip. She signed up for multiple affiliate programs so that she could break into the market, and she cleared 5 figures in revenue for 2016! While she spent a fair amount of money getting the website setup and paying for the content to flesh out the site, that initial investment has more than paid off because in 2017, so far, she’s seen more than a 300% increase in revenue. Antonella knows that the key to generating more revenue with a hustle like this is continually updating the website with custom content, new links, new deals and new retailers. Which is why she’s happy with her decision to use a service to help her update all that data. And since this is purely a side hustle for her, Antonella thinks of this website as a long-term investment and a nice source of income for her frequent trips.MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- OfficialCouponCode.com: Snag some sweet deals using Antonella's coupon codes!
- Wordpress: Antonella used Wordpress to create Coupon Code. Use this link and get 15% off, a special discount just for Side Hustle School listeners.
- Eyeful Media: Antonella's second side project that focuses on digital marketing and ecommerce consulting
- Sumo: The Wordpress plugin that Antonella uses which offers a suite of social sharing tools and email capture and works seamlessly with MailChimp
- FMTC | For Me to Compete: The feed service that Antonella uses to import and maintain deals that don’t involve her manually inputting data
- Rakuten LinkShare, Pepperjam, Impact Radius, ShareASale, AvantLink, & CJ: The various affiliate networks that Antonella has enrolled in
- Weekend “Book Registry” Site Earns Passive Income from Amazon.com: After a discovering a trend on Pinterest where expecting mothers ask for baby books in lieu of greeting cards at baby showers, a developer in Pennsylvania decides to create a book registry website to cater to it bringing in a new stream of passive income
- Army Veteran Makes $650,000 Advertising Apps: A Wisconsin native hits the jackpot with his smart approach to blogging, bringing in multiple six figures with nearly zero overhead costs
- Side Hustle Turned Full-Time Job Disrupts Car Rental Industry:A corporate employee who enjoys saving on car rentals builds an affiliate project that becomes so successful that the car rental companies try to put it out of business
Quote of the Day
"When you’re on your own, you have to find inexpensive ways to accomplish things, and I think it makes you better at your job. You have to be scrappy!"
—Antonella Pisani #SideHustleSchool
