What kind offers do you like?

I wrote an article about Hostgator and their “coupon code” policy. I think you know what it was about, but a small recapitulation. They offer a 20% off during the whole year, without any real offer in between. I think this approach just is not very creative. You get your customers, because people like discounts, but you still miss people who wait for something really much interesting.

I, for example, like to go around the web and search. I do not buy anything that’s cheap, but I like to see really special offers. The kind you see and you want to buy immediately, because it is an offer you know will not come back very soon! At the same time I realize, that providing your customers with a really reliable service costs money. And if your company really wants to do a good job, than the service costs even more. And thus the only way for you to cover the costs is to set the pricing in a good way.

As an owner of a hosting company you need to look on different things

• the support people
• the servers [ + other hardware]
• bandwidth/hard disk capacity
• …and more

and all this costs money. The only way to cover the costs, as I said in the previous paragraph, is to set the prices just right. But the competition is though so it is always good to offer a special coupon. And this is where you have to make the choice. You need to decided how much you are willing to give to your customers. And, at the same time, you know you can not go too high, because you need to cover the costs.

And here is the place where I see the space for different strategies. And as we can see there are many different strategies out in the hosting world. I can not mention all of them. Some companies just set a very low price and do not bother with any special offers, some set a low price and do give some coupon codes [well, the question is than how they make money at all...] and than there are the established players and strategies.

I would like to give some of my opinions and thought s about these strategies. I do not even know if they call them strategies, but for me, as a student of Economics, they pretty look like strategies. I will even use my own names for them

The same present during the whole year

Typically this is where Hostgator really fits. They offer 20% off during the whole year and just change the theme of their web site. But they are not the only company with this strategy. Cirtexhosting is the next one I have decided to include into this article. They offer a 50% off during the whole year, but this still looks more interesting than the 20% off from Hostgator.

[ad#Adsense360]

Big presents, that change…Better take this or you will miss…just kidding the offer continues!

This category is a really nice one, but you never know how you will end.You might be surprised how you can gain a lot or loose a lot just in a few clicks. This strategy let’s it look like this offer is the best out there and it will not return, but you might be surprised the next month when you see the same offer telling the same thing.

Two years ago I have used a “special offer” of 1and1.com They offered 6 months for free and than the next 6 months for the regular price of $4.99.  A pretty nice offer. Last summer they changed their pricing, but they still stay with this “strategy” – 6months free… .

Big events presents…

This category is my favorite one. You may find tons of special offers during the whole year, but do you know when are people willing to pay most and look for offers the most? Well, you got it – during special days like Christmas, New Year etc. I can say at least two names that come to my mind. Name.com and Namecheap.com and some other domain name registrars use this strategy. They offer special prices during these days and you can bet there is no better offer on the market The next time it’s Christmas be sure to look at their web pages.

This article comes to it’s end , but I would like to know your own point of view. What kind of offers do you like? Did you use any offers during the last Christmas? How did you like it?Just leave your response in the comments area Have a nice day!

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