If you are creating a coupon website, cashback site or deal aggregator, you already know the biggest bottleneck is keeping offers up to date. Manually copy and pasting coupons, writing descriptions, checking expiry dates and building affiliate links is a full-time, soul-crushing job that, in the end, produces broken links and expired offers that frustrates your users and is bad for SEO.

But there is a better way. This guide explains exactly how coupon feeds work, what to look for in a feed provider and how to take your site or app from blank slate to completely automated, monetization deal section:

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The Problem with Manual Coupon Aggregation

Before we start looking at solutions, let’s understand why so many publishers struggle with this problem. These are the 4 things that generally kill the momentum on any coupon or affiliate website:

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What Exactly is a Coupon Feed?

A coupon feed is simply a standardized, continuously updating data file or stream of offers that includes coupon codes, discounts, expiry dates, product categories and affiliate links for a defined set of merchants.

Think of an RSS feed, but for deals. Instead of subscribing to blog posts, you are subscribing to live deal data. When a merchant launches a coupon, you have it in your feed. When it expires, you can remove it automatically from your site or display it as expired.

‘The value of your time shifts from coupon acquisition to coupon display; exactly where it should be.’

A feed provider will take the difficult job of monitoring the stores and will send that information to you in a clean format.

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What to look for in a Coupon Feed Provider

There is more than one out there, so you need to understand how to evaluate feed providers:

Updates in real-time or frequently

With deal offers changing every day it’s crucial to have up-to-date content. Look for providers that are verifying and suspending old offers on a constant basis.

Incremental feeds

This simply means that the data is updated more efficiently. The feed provider sends you just what has changed instead of an entire download which saves bandwith and processing time.

Unique, SEO-optimized content

If your content is the same as hundreds of other coupon sites it won’t be ranked by search engines. The best feed providers generate new unique descriptions for each of their clients and this could provide you a serious advantage.

Affiliate deeplinking

The provider’s system should support sending your affiliate links directly within the data rather than the basic merchant links; this is how you’ll make commissions.

Flexible delivery formats

The most common formats are API, downloadable file, or a plugin for CMS such as WordPress. Ideally, they support all three.

Number of stores and categories

To attract a diverse audience you should aim to track a wide variety of merchants across various categories. Providers that track 2000+ stores in over 72 categories provide impressive depth.

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How LinkMyDeals Works as a Coupon Feed Provider

LinkMyDeals is specifically built for coupon websites, cashback sites and deal apps, and has been in the industry since 2013, working with clients from 28+ countries and powering the deal sections for well-known sites such as Microsoft, CouponFollow and PerkBox.

Here’s what LinkMyDeals does from beginning to end:

1. Collection

The platform monitors a massive network of 3,000+ of the most popular stores. No source is missed: affiliate networks, merchant websites, newsletters, banners, social media ads and even direct merchant submissions are covered.

2. Processing

Every offer is standardized and categorized (72 common categories are available), and a unique SEO-friendly description is created for each. Offers are verified and monitored continuously, with expired deals automatically suspended rather than simply flagged to prevent outdated content from showing on your site.

3. Customization

You have full control over the structure of your feed. You select the specific fields you need, as well as the stores and categories you want to track. The feed can be specific to a certain store, a category, or include a mix of multiple categories and stores – all fully customizable to integrate into your unique platform.

4. Delivery

Feeds can be delivered via API, downloadable files, or a pre-built WordPress plugin compatible with most major coupon themes. If your theme does not support native coupon post types, the feed can be imported as standard posts.

5. Monetization

This is the core feature of LinkMyDeals’ platform. Affiliate IDs are automatically embedded into feed links and its unique Smartlinks feature automatically redirects outgoing traffic to your preferred affiliate network for a particular store, meaning you won’t need to touch a single affiliate link if you ever decide to switch networks.

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Step-by-Step: How to get a coupon feed on your site or app

Here’s a quick rundown of the entire workflow, from signup to a live monetized coupon feed on your site or app.

1. 1

   Sign Up on LinkMyDeals

   Go to linkmydeals.com/plans-pricing and select the best plan for your scale. You can start small from 50 and add more to your store subscriptions as your store grows. You’ll get instant access to the dashboard where all the configuration takes place.

2. 2

   Subscribe to Stores

   Select which of the 3,000+ stores in the catalog to subscribe to based on the most relevant choices for your audience. You can filter by country, by category, and by store name. Only merchants you subscribe to will show up on your coupon feed, so do this carefully and strategically.

3. 3

   Join Affiliate Networks and Get Store Approvals

   In order to earn commission, you need to be part of an affiliate network like CJ Affiliate, Admitad, ShareASale, etc. After you sign up with an affiliate network, apply for all the merchants you want to monetize through that network. This is a normal part of affiliate marketing – LinkMyDeals manages the tracking, but not the commission payment itself (that’s through your affiliate network).

4. 4

   Add Your Affiliate IDs to the Dashboard

   Once you are approved by a store, go to the Affiliate Programs tab in your LinkMyDeals dashboard and add all the appropriate affiliate IDs for each network you are working with. From here on, all the deeplinks created for the merchants in your feed will point to a tracking URL that has your affiliate ID in it.

5. 5

   Configure Merchant Deeplinks and Smartlinks

   Under Merchant Deeplinks, you’ll set which affiliate network to use to create tracking URLs for each subscribed merchant. This setting determines where your link goes and which tracking ID it uses. The smartlinks feature automatically redirects out-going links through your chosen network; you can swap affiliate networks by changing the setting in the dashboard once and never again on your website, as every link is updated automatically.

6. 6

   Access Your Coupon Feed via API or Plugin

   Your custom coupon feed is ready! Get it through the LinkMyDeals API (JSON/CSV) and download it directly, or via the WordPress plugin. Use Incremental feeds to only sync deals that have changed since your last pull to save you time.

7. 7

   Integrate Into Your Website or App

   Map the feed fields to your own site’s database and upload to your CMS or app. For WordPress users the plugin handles most of the integration. If you’re using a custom platform, the API will let you create a completely unique system. LinkMyDeals can even provide sub IDs for cashback platforms so you can properly track individual user-level clicks and commissions.

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Key Features at a Glance

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Who Should Use a Coupon Feed Service?

A coupon feed is best for all publishers who are monetizing their site through affiliate links at scale. These include:

If you have been manually updating the coupon database on your site, even a few times a week, it’s likely that a coupon feed will save you a lot of time and will improve the quality of data in your coupons database, if you have a seriously run coupon or cashback service on your website, it will almost always be crucial infrastructure.

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Conclusion

Setting up a coupon feed is not a complex process and can quickly be achieved by selecting the right provider, and setting up the monetization properly. In short, it’s about choosing the right stores, implementing your affiliate network credentials, and allowing the feed to take care of the rest.

After setting it up, you can devote all of your time to generating traffic to your website as well as optimizing it to offer users a seamless experience and drive conversions. A good coupon feed saves you hours every week that would otherwise be spent manually curating coupon content, and gives you the leverage needed to properly monetize your affiliate marketing business at scale. LinkMyDeals has offered coupon and cashback publishers this benefit since 2013, providing real-time data, exclusive content, and the tools required for profitable affiliate link management at scale.