Hip2Save's mission for its staff and their readers is to live more fulfilling and rewarding lives by saving money with coupons, taking advantage of the best online deals, and shopping stores with confidence - the “HIP” way to shop, to save and to live.
Why and when was Hip2Save created?
Hip2Save began in 2008 when Collin Morgan started couponing to dig her family out of debt. She started to see success as she found great deals and frugal tips and began to see her debt shrink. It was a huge boost to her confidence and she could not wait to share with others. She started posting on Hip2Save for fun and then over the course of several months she realized there were lots of people stopping by the site. Things got busier and busier and she recruited her sister to help out, but now 11 years later, we are a team of over 30.
In what way does Hip2Save utilize Affiliate Marketing?
Hip2Save relies heavily on affiliate marketing. We have two types of posts on our site, deals that drive readers right to an offer, and our evergreen side of the business where we share product reviews, frugal tips and tricks, recipes and DIY projects. Our goal is always to make sure we are positioning a brand in the best spot for their offer and product. That is always our objective, to make sure we are offering brands the best possible experience.
What kinds of products and deals resonate with your audience?
Our demographic is primarily women ages 29-40, who are shopping for their families and so most products do well on our site. We see lots of success with toys, kids clothing deals and small home appliances. Those are our best sellers!
How does Hip2Save differentiate itself from other partners in the affiliate space?
Hip2Save strives to stand apart from the competition by making the site so much more than deals. We work hard to build a community and have personal posts from our owner and lots of other helpful info. We consider ourselves a lifestyle blog that shares deals, rather than a deal site. We have three full time deal photographers that take beautiful pictures, and you'll notice that is reflected on our site. Each post has amazing pictures that position the brand in the best possible light.
One other thing that sets us apart is that we are customer oriented. Our posts share brands and products that are going to be helpful to readers whether or not there is monetary gain for us. Our readers are always first.
What are the key factors in determining which programs to join and what do you look for in an advertiser partner?
We generally join with new advertisers when they reach out directly to us with an offer. It's helpful for us to see how strong the offers are going to be and what types of products are available. We take into account whether we have posted the brand previously through a third party or not and what the brands reviews look like. We literally get hundreds of emails a day, so we love when a brand takes the time to look over our site and send us a thoughtful proposal. It's hard for us to look through big spreadsheets or to browse an advertiser site looking for best offers before we are joined.
What are benefits for advertisers working with Hip2Save?
We have a HUGE audience of over three million monthly unique visitors and the community feel of our site makes us a trusted source. We only post items and brands that are highly rated and our readers know that they can trust us to do all of the work up front to vet the promotions and the products. Readers really do view each post we do as a personal recommendation of the brand and product. We are a team of primarily women who love many of the products we post about, so we often add in little quotes or personal pictures to make the site feel like a personal experience for the reader.
What is the best way that an advertiser can help support their partnership with you?
As I mentioned before, we love when advertisers take the time to get to know our site and find ways that our brands can align, and then offer those suggestions.
Why did you join the Awin network and ShareASale network and what features do you enjoy?
We love the support of both networks and the ease of locating a new or existing brand and pulling links. Having contact info available for brands is super helpful too!
Do you have any upcoming promotions, new launches, or exciting news you would like to share?
We have new Holiday shopping pages that we are going to keep up throughout the entire upcoming year. There are always opportunities for gift giving, and we hope to build strong search results for all of these gift guides so they are a resource all year long. They are a great entry level placement for advertisers.
Another newish thing is our sister site Hip2Keto.com. It is experiencing tremendous growth and we hope to continue building advertiser relationships for that site as well.
Has there been a pivotal shift or turning point in your affiliate activities within the last 12 months? If so, what was it?
We've been heavily focused on SEO the last six months and we are seeing it pay off. We have a few review posts that are top Google results and they bring steady sales for advertisers. It's exciting to see that happen! We are always looking for more ways to bring value to our readers and help our affiliate partners at the same time. We are seeing shift on social to starting to be viewed as more of an influencer role and we are excited about the opportunities that opens up for working with new brands. We like to get creative in our approach of presenting products to our readers and it's fun to see something that we genuinely love become a reader favorite too.
Interested in partnering with Hip2Save? Please contact our publisher management team.
