A month back we were planning to launch a deal site, to be different than others out there, we changed our business model drastically. So much so that we weren

A month back we were planning to launch a deal site, to be different than others out there, we changed our business model drastically. So much so that we weren't going to make a lot of profit, however, we still wanted to pursue the business. Our model involved giving the deal to the user for free, customer pays the business directly. We charge the business one time flat fee for running the deal OR charge the business 10% comission based on how many coupons actually got used. This way, no one was holding the businesses money and the customers were out of a buyers remorse. Well, while talking to a few businesses we've now found that scoutmob is already doing this. and As others have said, this is a sales heavy businesses that requires you to spend the money in order to get a user base. For example, scoutmob recently partnered with budweiser and sponsored FREE happy hours. I've mentioned our first day journey to local merchants in a separate HN post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2994673 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2994673 The local businesses will continue to suffer from daily deal sites until the sites stop competing to get the customers. We are still going to continue our business model of charging the business only a one time flat fee, however, since we are new, we are getting a lot of BLOCK from businesses as they would much rather go with someone who has a huge user base.