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> When you get 2x your normal business walking through the door it's kind of hard not to make money.

That depends on your margins. A half off coupon that you get half the revenue of means you only get 25% of the revenue for your customers. That can be very hard to make money on, regardless of traffic.



Well, even if you do it at a loss, it's still marketing. Marketing isn't free, and it usually very costly. A stupid billboard costs $5k a month. Our businesses (and most, I'd imagine), run Groupons at a loss and make it up through marketing, cross sales and up sales.

We were getting $60 for a $169 product that cost us $80-100 to make.


So when you say it's hard not to make money with 2x the customers you actually meant you were losing money... I understand that it's marketing, but it's not making money until you get people coming back without a Groupon.


He wasn't making money directly on the Groupon deal, but on upsells: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2654788




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