Can I make money developing coupon books?

Why not? Everyone likes to save money and I suspect you do, too. Product manufacturers use coupons as an incentive to get increased foot traffic to their little spot on store shelves and online locations. Coupons are delivered in both print publications and online.

In your immediate area there may be businesses that would love to see increased foot traffic. You can be the superhero that helps them accomplish this miraculous feat and gain some impressive income at the same time. What’s more you can extend the reach of the books by having someone else sell them for you.

Sounds too good to be true

Sure, but I’m not finished. You see, you have to approach businesses about the idea of developing the coupon book. You can approach the distribution point in at least two ways. The first is to indicate that the coupon book will be mailed at no cost to individuals in a specific area or region. The second option is to develop the coupon book as a fundraiser for a school or charitable group.

How does that work?

In the first scenario you charge the business owner an inclusion fee (ex. $100) to produce and distribute the coupon to the addresses in your coverage area. If it costs you $300 to develop, print and distribute the coupons and you have 12 businesses participating you have a return of $900 (more businesses = more return).

In the second scenario you can offer inclusion in the book at a slightly reduced rate (ex. A $60 inclusion fee) and indicate it is being developed to help charitable organizations. You derive a portion of the income from the advertiser and a portion of the income from the charitable organization.

Why would a charitable organization sell my coupon book?

Let’s say the cost to produce the book is $2 per copy and you suggest to the charitable organization they can sell the book for $10. The organization would give you $5 per sold book and they would keep $5 for their own efforts. Remember you’ve already covered actual expenses with money from the business owner so the $5 profit comes to you without the need to sell it yourself.

If the coupons in the book have a retail value of $100 or more and the book costs the consumer $10 they may feel they are getting a bargain. The charitable organization wins because they have a home grown fundraiser with no upfront costs, the businesses win because they have increased foot traffic, and you win because you came up with a moneymaking idea that is beneficial to everyone involved.

Time investment

You can probably spend an hour or so reviewing the phone book to target potential businesses and spend a day or two making calls. You can either design the coupon book yourself using a graphic design program or you can work with a printer. You should also purchase addresses from a service that supplies that information (usdatacorp.net for example) or target a school group or other charitable organization to sell the book for you.

A few suggestions

* Keep in contact with the businesses you work with. If they are successful they may be willing to work with you again.

* Keep in contact with the charity you are working with. You can either have them pay for the books up front or sell the books and return your portion to you following the sale (i.e. once a week, etc).

* If you are successful, look at duplicating the effort in other nearby cities.

Coupon books do not take a great deal of time to sell or produce and the return can be encouraging. You can help others while you help yourself and that can be a powerful motivation.

I wanna know more

Scams abound for coupon books, which is why I suggest making it a homegrown book instead of outsourcing the coupon book for development. To read one man’s story of how the concept developed into a multi-million dollar business and has helped dozens of civic organizations visit http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/1996/11/04/smallb3.html