[bradly]

I spoke with a business owner recently that had used Groupon and he shared a similar experience with me.

He said that with Groupon you must discount your offering by at least 50%, and that you must share 50% the sales with Groupon. That means the most you can sell your goods is 25% of there normal price. Where they made the mistake, he said, was in not thinking it would be very successful. You are able to put a max on the number of sells, but they only thought they would sell ~40 so they left it open. They ended up selling over 800.

He said you have to think of Groupon as a marketing cost. Multiply the max you are going to sell times the discount and make sure you are okay spending that much on a marketing campaign.

[vidar]

If someone offers you a bad deal, you reject it. Simple as that.