Domain Development 101: Build A Coupon Site – Today

I get a lot of questions from blog readers about how to build specific kinds of sites. Domain Investors are always full of incredible ideas, but when it comes to development, turning those ideas into a reality can sometimes be a challenge. So I thought today I’d share a really easy way to build a nice-looking, fully-featured, coupon site quickly and easily.

When most people think of building a custom app on their domain they usually head over to oDesk or eLance. This works if you understand the development process, but can be confusing if you’re just getting started. I know a ton of people who’ve spent a small fortune on outsourced development only to end-up with something clunky, hard to use, and impossible to customize without a Computer Science degree.

Now I’m not saying hiring a developer to build a custom site is the wrong answer, in many cases it’s the right thing to do, but you need the budget, and the know-how to do it right. If you’ve never managed a developer or team of developers before you may need to hire someone to help you translate your great ideas, into something that can be created, and built for scale by a developer.

So now for the main subject of your post, building a coupon site on one of your domain names. Sure, we could all build info sites on all of our domain names but that’s no fun, is it? The more that you can create a resource that people come back to, the more traffic and revenue you can create. Unless you’ve been living in a cave then you probably know that coupons are hot right now in a variety of niches.

I know there are a lot of Domainers out there with great coupon-related domains, but no great solution for building a real brand on the names. Well it might be easier than you think to create a great-looking, easy-to-customize site in a few hours thanks to AppThemes. AppThemes creates great WordPress themes that contain app-like functionality. Their coupon theme is easy to configure and looks great:

clipper_coupon_theme

Clipper has a nice and clean look-and-feel and thanks to really solid WordPress Integration, you can completely customize it without writing a line of code. It’s easy to setup coupon codes and then use cool interactive features like voting to rank coupons by popularity and success rate.

Since Clipper is a WordPress theme all you need is a WordPress install, then just add the theme and viola – you’re coupon site is ready. The total cost for this theme is $99 for under $100 you can get a full-featured coupon site that you can customize yourself. So next time you have a big idea for one of your domains, think of how tools like WordPress can help you get your minimum viable product out and to the market as quickly as possible. This will let you spend your time learning about your customers and optimizing revenue. Don’t be afraid to go beyond a simple information site, build for your users, and you might just find yourself building a real online brand!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton