Once upon a time I was involved in web hosting business. So, web hosting companies I was working for often provided discount coupons. It should be noted that once coupon codes appeared at one of websites they were almost imediately distributed among popular topic related forums. So, I would recommend you to provide members of topic related communities with information on discounts and they will quickly tell about your company each other. It is very effective self-advertizing technique.

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I think submitting your own coupons to online coupon sites is a good strategy but you really need to provide a very catchy discount offer as there are thousands of businesses offering discount coupons online.   As I understand your initial target is locally. Perhaps, traditional coupons via newspapers within your area can reach your target customers better.

My pleasure, Nicole. =]

petrosianii - thanks for taking the time to share that insightful reply! :)

A recent blog and thread on the NYT 'You're the Boss' blog reveals that coupon sites aren't ideal for all business types and models. I wonder how a business could be profitable in the long run using a site like Groupon. Groupon requires you to both discount your service and pay them a 50% commission on sales, typically. I've done a cursory study of our 3 main service offerings. First, Wikipedia writing. Our price is priced as it is for a reason. Discounting it, then paying a 50% commission to Groupon for blasting a coupon to its members, and there's no way the service remains profitable for us, unless I do all the selling and qualifying of Groupon leads myself, and leave out my sales consultant. Doing that, though, is problemmatic for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is I hired her and pay her to sell. So, no good. Second, our premium press release subscription. Smashing numbers, this looks a bit more promising. A rough calculation suggests that, if we sell 15 subscriptions with Groupon, we make some money. But the same problem of cutting out the sales consultant remains, which isn't fair to her. And now, also a new problem: 15 press releases to edit and publish for about one quarter of what the service is priced at normally? Whew! That's still a loss in terms of labor. And what of repeat customers? Yes, it is possible we will retain these customers and they can go back to paying full price when the Groupon PR subscription ends. Now we've got new customers, at full price, that we likely wouldn't have had before, and are struggling to get now. This looks more promising, but Brian's right, it is a short-term loss, either way you look at it. 3rd, our SEO services. This falls in the same boat as the Wikipedia services. Even if we get the sales from Groupon, we still have the labor problem, the cutting out the sales person problem, I just don't know. I mean, if Brian's correct: then raising prices when it's time's up, you may just wind up losing these customers for good. Then what? In short, the consensus I'm seeing out there is that coupon sites like these really only work well for location-based, product-oriented businesses, like retail stores, restaurants, hotels, mom and pop stores. And then, only for businesses who have the capacity for relatively quick scalability, which most microbusinesses don't have. But it's worth a try, I suppose.

Coupon's offer an interesting dynamic. What type of business are you? You can also look into running a Groupon or similar offer, we have run on both Groupon and Plum District with a bit of success, although those type of sites seem to work best for restaurants.

You'll want to take a look at Google places as well.  That way when people search for your business or service in a geographical area they may well find you.

Not sure how large you can scale your business, but I recommend you also look into websites like groupon or whatever is popular in your area, it would generate way larger volume than regular copouns, and the beauty of it is that they take care of many aspect of the deal for you.