Question: How Does Shopping-Bargains Make Money?

One thing I’m frequently asked is how we, as a company, make any money since we charge nothing for our coupon codes and other services. We also don’t have a site registration process or run popup ads. The answer is we are paid a commission or referral by the merchants whenever they sell something to somebody who clicked a link on our site and bought something on theirs.

The process is private and we don’t know who buys what. At the end of the month we know that X dollars were spent at X stores and from those transactions we earn X. From the store’s perspective, we help them attract new shoppers and make additional sales. From our perspective, we are paid to help people be more frugal when shopping online. And because our payment comes out of the store’s advertising budget, it doesn’t raise your prices over “going direct” to the merchant. On the contrary, because each store must compete for your attention on our site, they provide us with some great coupons that actually can reduce your spending.  Since a store would rather have a smaller-size order than no order at all, the process is a win-win for everyone involved.

I like helping people and I like win-win arrangements. So, with this in mind, my request for you is when you buy something online to please be sure to click a link on our site to the merchant’s site so we receive credit for the sale. If just our coupon codes are used but our site links are not clicked then we don’t receive credit for the sale.