Fitness Deals!

[Winning]

Update:

This may be turning in to a "journey/progress" thread.... because I am getting started! I figured why not just try? I have lots of free time right now because its the start of a new semester in college and things haven't picked up quite quickly yet. Worst case I drop this idea in a few weeks or months if it doesn't get the initial traction and liking from the fitness community.

A bit about me: I'm a 20 year old college student. I've successfully started a few online businesses where I net 6 figures in my best year. Nothing special and I'm looking for much bigger projects. I won't answer questions about my previous online businesses because I am focussing on this new one.

I was up late last night getting everything started. Here's what I got done:
**I will not be posting the URL or name because I don't know if that's allowed**

-Bought the domain. Six letter catchy name. Only $3 with a GoDaddy coupon (gotta love coupons cause we're starting a coupon/deal site haha)
-Reserved all social network accounts (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter)
-Set up Wordpress
-Got the Wordpress theme all loaded up

Next up on the list:
-Get logo created(most likely on Fiverr for $5-$10)
-Modify theme to look better
-Look for fitness/supplement deals on websites
-Start posting a few deals
-Start strategizing my marketing strategy
- most likely will be paid Facebook traffic, Bodybuilding.com threads, sponsor Instagram fitness athletes etc

Would love everyones thoughts/etc!

Cheers!

 

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[biophase]

Update:

-Look for fitness/supplement deals on websites

Cheers!

Do this first. The deals need to be good enough to get people to come back to your site again and again. If you want post a few deals that you find here and see if others think the deals are great.

 

[theag]

I'm planning to do this in my niche, too.

This is one of the business models where the money truly is "in the list". So build a list.

Deal quality will be very important. But if you have a big list you can make decent money by promoting standard affiliate coupons.

 

[Winning]

Do this first. The deals need to be good enough to get people to come back to your site again and again. If you want post a few deals that you find here and see if others think the deals are great.

Hey, that's a great idea.

Deals:

BSN Syntha 6 - Buy One Get One 50% Off: http://www.a1supplements.com/Syntha-6-5.04-Lbs.-p-19136.html
BSN Cell Mass - Buy One Get One Free: http://www.bodybuilding.com/store/bsn/cellmass-2.html
JLAB earphones- $40 OFF: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DOGD7PW/?tag=tff-amazonparser-20
Ultimate 10 Probiotic - 2 for $9.99: http://www.vitaminshoppe.com/p/ultimate-10-probiotic-30-capsules/vs-2162#.VM-7cHB4qzt

Those are a few I've found so far. It's actually tougher than I thought to find supplement/fitness product deals, but if we can find a few per week, I think we might be able to sustain a community and website.

What do you guys think?

 

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[Winning]

I'm planning to do this in my niche, too.

This is one of the business models where the money truly is "in the list". So build a list.

Deal quality will be very important. But if you have a big list you can make decent money by promoting standard affiliate coupons.

Do you mean an email list? If so, I definitely agree that having a community that keeps coming back for deals is essential for this type of site to work. Especially in the fitness industry where people are constantly buying new supplements and gear.

Good luck on your project- keep us updated or let me know if you have a thread yourself. We can bounce ideas off each other.

 

[Winning]

Update:

So, I kind of realize that affiliate marketing doesn't fully abide by CENTS. C being the major one. I don't have control on the deals that supplement/fitness companies are creating and it is a waiting game for me to find these and post them on the site. However, I am going to do this as a fun side project (as a meathead myself) and try to help people find deals on fitness items. Why not? This may just last a week or a month or a few months. If people find it useful, then I'll keep it going.

I've done everything on the To-Do list that I had above. Instead of going to Fiverr for the logo I created it myself in Photoshop and it doesn't look too bad. Actually pretty happy with it. The theme has been modified a bit to add the logo, side widgets (including categories,search,etc). I have about 5 deals on the site right now and am still looking for the best ones.

As far as marketing:

I don't want to spend too much money on this just yet. I want to try and build up organically and see the response from the fitness community. I'm going to try the good ol' Instagram hashtag-like strategy. I've created the Instagram account for the site and I'll post the deals on there as well. What I do is search for hashtags like [HASHTAG]#fitness[/HASHTAG], [HASHTAG]#supplement[/HASHTAG] [HASHTAG]#bsn[/HASHTAG] [HASHTAG]#proteinshake[/HASHTAG] etc and then like the pictures. Hopefully the people that see the like go back to our Instagram page and follow us or go visit the site for the deals.

That's it for now. Marketing, marketing, marketing. That's what it will come down to for this site to thrive in the beginning.

 

[Winning]

Quick update:

I know I just updated less than an hour ago but this Instagram marketing isn't too bad so far. I'm attaching an image of an example discussion I had with someone about the site. I've blacked out usernames for the confidentiality of this user.

So far in 15 minutes of liking pictures with hashtags I've gotten two follows. Not bad, not bad at all. They both liked the idea as well and I was able to speak with them a bit.

This is free marketing people. And best of all, you get to have discussions with people in the niche you are targeting to see their opinions.

 

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[Winning]

Another quick update:

Ok, promise this is probably the last one for the night. I like posting longer updates rather than these short ones, but I'm kind of pumped right now with the little bit of validation I'm getting so far. The user I just had a conversation with after I liked his picture on Instagram gave my account a shoutout. I didn't even ask for it so that was super nice. Attached is an image of the shoutout (account names and such blacked out).

I hope everyone can see the power of social media and how a bit of work goes a long way-- especially when you are just starting out. I imagine that with most people 1 or 2 followers seems like a bit but after time things just snowball, and it becomes 10, 190, 1k, 50k,etc. The farther you get, the easier it becomes with new eyes on your stuff.

 

[Stu_Hefner]

Instagram is going to be your friend there are many large fitness pages you can leverage from.

 

[Winning]

Instagram is going to be your friend there are many large fitness pages you can leverage from.

Most definitely. I think that Instagram may become my most valuable traffic stream aside from an email list.

 

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[Stu_Hefner]

I sold my 80k fitness ig Maybe 6months ago, otherwise I would've promoted. Still got a few contacts with pages though.

 

[Winning]

I sold my 80k fitness ig Maybe 6months ago, otherwise I would've promoted. Still got a few contacts with pages though.

Ohh that would have been nice! Yeah I think my next step is to sponsor some of these fitness pages on Instagram. I am at 10+ followers after a day or so of liking other photos with hashtags. I think sponsorships will get the ball rolling quicker since I've already validated that people want this kind of page and site. On top of that, I think that when people see a fitness page with thousands of followers it looks more credible and people will be more willing to follow it.

 

[GSF]

Most definitely. I think that Instagram may become my most valuable traffic stream aside from an email list.

Have you considered the stack social business model, basically you use other peoples traffic/ resources, you do the following;

1. go to fitness blog owners/ publishers/ site owners and see if they will do a shout out/ mention to their members/ readers or host a section on their site with your daily deals/ flash sale offers in exchange for commission, this is a good tactic because they have loyal traffic and a higher level of trust which will result in higher conversion rates for you compared to banner advertising etc. The goal here is to acquire a large amount of other peoples traffic to use as leverage for the next step;

2. now you have multiple fitness sites prepared to host your offers, you go to fitness product companies with the approach that you have a network with a large amount of traffic which is highly relevant and targeted to their products they sell, will they be interested in providing a discount on their products in exchange for massive targeted brand exposure across the network of sites you have.

3. Go back to the fitness blog sites, provide them with the offers you have been able to agree to with product companies etc,

obviously its a bit more complicated than ive outlined, but this is win win for everyone, fitness blog owners get to monetize their website and content, product owners get large brand exposure, you get essentially free traffic/ free products to work with/ even a free way to build a list plus commissions, check out how stack social works

 

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[Winning]

Have you considered the stack social business model, basically you use other peoples traffic/ resources, you do the following;

1. go to fitness blog owners/ publishers/ site owners and see if they will do a shout out/ mention to their members/ readers or host a section on their site with your daily deals/ flash sale offers in exchange for commission, this is a good tactic because they have loyal traffic and a higher level of trust which will result in higher conversion rates for you compared to banner advertising etc. The goal here is to acquire a large amount of other peoples traffic to use as leverage for the next step;

2. now you have multiple fitness sites prepared to host your offers, you go to fitness product companies with the approach that you have a network with a large amount of traffic which is highly relevant and targeted to their products they sell, will they be interested in providing a discount on their products in exchange for massive targeted brand exposure across the network of sites you have.

3. Go back to the fitness blog sites, provide them with the offers you have been able to agree to with product companies etc,

obviously its a bit more complicated than ive outlined, but this is win win for everyone, fitness blog owners get to monetize their website and content, product owners get large brand exposure, you get essentially free traffic/ free products to work with/ even a free way to build a list plus commissions, check out how stack social works

Hey!

Appreciate the idea for spinning this idea further. However, we are not contacting supplement/fitness product companies anymore. We are instead looking for the deals that are already happening and letting everyone know about them. We become an affiliate at this point by going this route and aren't at the mercy of having to convince companies to slash their prices.

I want to grow this site organically and build our own base like Dealsplus, Retailmenot, etc.

 

[jegz]

Good luck on your venture! Seems promising. How do you look for deals online? Google? I could save a good deal monthly instead of paying full retail price hahaha.

 

[Winning]

Good luck on your venture! Seems promising. How do you look for deals online? Google? I could save a good deal monthly instead of paying full retail price hahaha.

The deals are found online, through social media, going to big fitness brand sites daily etc.

 

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[Winning]

Update:

A major problem we have run in to is that there aren't many deals in the supplement/fitness industry on a weekly basis. We keep finding the same deals and when we do find new ones they aren't even that great. We cross-check with Amazon to see if the price is lower than Amazon and more often than not, a 25% off coupon at, for example, GNC, is still more expensive than just shopping on Amazon.

Hmm....