How are coupons used?

How are affiliates paid for printable coupons,used in store?

• I am starting a site where I will be offering printable coupons, with coupons of local vendors, however I am having trouble with the pricing. how do I charge vendors? for coupons like say - 10% off on purchase above 50$ or 15 % off on a camera.  How am I supposed to charge them?    I thought of charging them a fixed standard fee,(5$) each time a coupon is printed. and if they wanted to promote it then further promotional charges on the website, does this model make sense?

• Answer:

  There are three (main) ways for compensation/payment in my experience. 1. Flat fee for the placement (on homepage or top category page). At Sports Authority we paid this for bigger campaigns. Just paid a few $$ for a display ad that drove to a download page for the coupon to be redeemed instore. It was the easiest to facilitate, and might be a good way to start. 2. Unique Barcodes provided from the store -- and getting money off redemptions and not downloads. We also created special coupon numbers/barcodes that can be tracked and scanned (and paid off of). there were a lot of issues with paying the appropriate amount back to the affiliate. You could "paying too much side" if the coupon went 'viral' and got posted on other forums, websites, etc. You could also under-pay if it didn't scan because it was off a mobile phone, smudged or ripped (very possible with older POS systems). 3. Partnering with alternativeSolutions -- There are a lot of companies that are starting to use this company, http://www.revtrax.com/,which puts controls in place to make sure there are only x amount of downloads, only from the 'right' sites, etc. etc. to solve for the issues in #2.The customer can still use the coupon, but the company doesn't have to pay out in the cases of viral distribution. However, it would not solve for underpaying. These services also cost money. I think a lot of merchants wil have a hard time justifying downloads and anyone can "click" on a coupon -- they want sales and redemptions. You can provide download rate as one KPI.