Discount Coupons - Worth The Time And Money?

[nocturn]

if you dont want to buy a website from the guy, fine. How you can argue that a deal that offers 3,000 baht worth of food and drink in a given restaurant for 1500 baht is a scam is beyond me.

[steelepulse]

This is the modern day version of the coupon books which have been around for years. I was going to do this years ago, but decided that all the local travel agents that I was going to use to sell these books would somehow "lose" a lot of the books and would keep the commission and the sales price of the books, not too mention copy cats would come out of the woodwork.

To this day coupon books and sites like this do well on the high margin types of businesses, usually limited to the slow or down times of particular establishments.

[itzco]

I'm quite close to this market so I see must deals from everyone all the time. (Disclosure: I run an aggregator: mythaideals.com)

For consumers:

Some deals are actually quite good, others aren't. As usual (specially in Asia) you have to be careful. I've found deals on travelling aren't usually good. Perhaps because hotels have to guarantee the best fare to sites like Agoda, hard to know why, but usually a quick google search will give you a better price.

Restaurants and SPA's sometimes throw amazing deals, I got an excellent french meal at 'Ma maison' at Nai lert Park hotel for nothing (I think 300 baht). Other times deals are not real or good, the original prices are inflated or the final price is the normal one, i.e. I got a buffet by the river can't remember exactly but something like 1200 -> 500; when the couple on the next table ask the price it was a mere 700. Still not that bad but I dislike lies.

While in the US this is a marketing model (that unfortunately has also harmed some business) in Thailand is a sales tool, no one is selling at loss or cost to get future customers.

So, Yes I would definitely use the deals but I would always google the offer before buying.

(I tried to promote people sharing experiences in the comments section of my site, but that didn't work)

For business:

I track a lot of information and I can see some are doing a killing some are just doing fine and a couple have closed.

The market is already saturated and it's expensive to run this kind of operation, you need a strong sales team, publishers, translators, photographers a web team, a marketing team, a social media team (or employee at least), technical people...

The application running the deal is nothing there are many open source or cheap ones; running the real business is a different thing.

Ensogo has been smart and invested a lot of money in marketing, that's why they get those numbers.

(Remember ideas are nothing it's all about execution)

[bkkjames]

I'm quite close to this market so I see must deals from everyone all the time. (Disclosure: I run an aggregator: mythaideals.com)

For consumers:

Some deals are actually quite good, others aren't. As usual (specially in Asia) you have to be careful. I've found deals on travelling aren't usually good. Perhaps because hotels have to guarantee the best fare to sites like Agoda, hard to know why, but usually a quick google search will give you a better price.

Restaurants and SPA's sometimes throw amazing deals, I got an excellent french meal at 'Ma maison' at Nai lert Park hotel for nothing (I think 300 baht). Other times deals are not real or good, the original prices are inflated or the final price is the normal one, i.e. I got a buffet by the river can't remember exactly but something like 1200 -> 500; when the couple on the next table ask the price it was a mere 700. Still not that bad but I dislike lies.

While in the US this is a marketing model (that unfortunately has also harmed some business) in Thailand is a sales tool, no one is selling at loss or cost to get future customers.

So, Yes I would definitely use the deals but I would always google the offer before buying.

(I tried to promote people sharing experiences in the comments section of my site, but that didn't work)

For business:

I track a lot of information and I can see some are doing a killing some are just doing fine and a couple have closed.

The market is already saturated and it's expensive to run this kind of operation, you need a strong sales team, publishers, translators, photographers a web team, a marketing team, a social media team (or employee at least), technical people...

The application running the deal is nothing there are many open source or cheap ones; running the real business is a different thing.

Ensogo has been smart and invested a lot of money in marketing, that's why they get those numbers.

(Remember ideas are nothing it's all about execution)

Thanks for the info, albeit an old topic of a year old.