In 1999 I registered CouponsAndDeals.com. Over the next few years it made [MIKE: as specific as you're comfortable being. "Millions" reads very differently with a real number, even a range, attached].
The mechanism was search arbitrage, and if you weren't doing SEO in that era, it's hard to explain how open the field was.
Then the era ended. [MIKE: what killed it. Algorithm updates? The coupon-space consolidation into RetailMeNot/Honey? Just moving on with life?] The site sat frozen with mid-2000s content for the better part of two decades, still online, still renewed every year, a museum piece with a domain authority.
This summer I turned it back on.
What a coupon site can even be in 2026
Not what it was. The old playbook, rank for "[store] coupon codes," show codes, collect affiliate commission, is a graveyard now. That space belongs to Honey, RetailMeNot, and Capital One Shopping, and half those codes never worked anyway, which is why nobody trusts coupon sites anymore.
The rebuild goes at the trust problem directly. The new CouponsAndDeals is "the best ways to save, actually tested": reviews of cash-back and savings apps I actually use, with real screenshots and honest fee math, stacking guides that show a real grocery run, and a signup-bonus board ranked by payout versus effort. The "Trusted since 1999" badge on the header isn't marketing copy; it's the domain's actual registration history doing the work.
The rebuild itself
Cost so far: [MIKE: real number, domain renewals plus roughly zero hosting]. The 1999 site ran on [MIKE: old stack/hosting story].
The honest odds
I'm not predicting it makes millions again. The search landscape that made that possible is gone, AI answers are eating informational queries, and the savings niche is crowded with well-funded players. What I've got is a 27-year-old domain, first-hand content in a niche drowning in churned filler, and a cost basis of approximately nothing. That's the experiment: can an aged domain plus genuine experience plus 2026 tooling find a real audience where the old tricks can't? I'll publish the traffic and revenue numbers here as they come in, whichever way they go.
The numbers (updating as we go)
| Date | Traffic | Email subs | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| July 2026 (relaunch) | [BASELINE] | 0 | $0 |
| [Next update] | — | — | — |
No screenshots of Lamborghinis will ever appear on this page.
This is one rebuild in a series. I'm reviving my whole 1999-2005 portfolio (fan sites, concert calendars, music sites, a webmaster resource) and documenting all of it here at WebMogul.com. Visit the finished work at CouponsAndDeals.com.
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