[dgunn]

Looking at Google's keyword tool shows that the search volume is 1.) low (~3600/mo) and 2.) highly competitive. I'm not sure how well this is going to work out. To most shops, coupons are probably more about loyalty than new business. They compete for these keywords just because it's easy for them to do so. But most places give you coupons at check out as an incentive to come back next time.

I'm not saying this is impossible but I don't see a very lucrative angle here. Are you trying to make money or is this a hobby? I saw an ad spot on the site, so I assume this is your current biz plan but with this kind of search volume, even if you got all the traffic, it probably wouldn't be attractive enough to demand good rates from advertisers.

This could possibly work with the small shops but you would have to be able to show them you have high volume locally as they would only care about ads being shows to people close enough to patronize their store.

[elboheme]

I wouldn't consider search volume to be low. Using Google's Traffic Estimator tool, I see that the broad search for the keyword phrase 'oil change coupons' is expected to generate about 37k impressions and over 1,100 clicks on a daily basis.

And with an average cost per click of $20, I think ranking for keywords related to oil change coupons could be quite lucrative.

The problem is I'm not ranking and I have no idea why.

[dgunn]

I think the issue is that most people won't search for the exact phrase [oil change coupons] which has a US search volume of about 3600/mo. Your 'broad' level search shows anything related to 'oil change coupons'. The issue is that the other ~160000 searches per month are searches like "firestone oil change coupon" or "goodyear oil change coupons" which you will never beat Firestone or Goodyear on. Furthermore, those companies will never allow you to beat them even if you partner with them in some way. Currently, if they win the traffic for "[brand name] oil change coupons", they show the visitor their coupon ONLY but if they give that traffic to you, you will show them competitors coupons as well.

Consider Hipmunk. They do something similar to you. They wrap many disparate airlines and allow you to search them all at once easily. They ultimately send that purchase to that airline (or another third party like Orbitz) so it seems like it's in the airline's best interest to play nice but they originally didn't want to. Hipmunk eventually owned enough flight search traffic that they could get some good partners but that's hard to do and it's probably even harder with oil changes since getting a great deal on an oil change could mean dollars while getting the best deal on a flight could save thousands.

It's good to point out that Hipmunk (if I recall correctly) was more interested in the hotel search space and just used flight search as an easier way in. Meaning even with all the money in the commercial flight space, it apparently wasn't lucrative enough to focus on entirely.

I'm not trying to be negative and I'm certainly no expert in this arena. I just think these are valid concerns.

[elboheme]

Duly noted.