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Groupon has been saving consumers tons of dollars on their favorite activities and bringing unknown businesses new clientele for a little over a year now with its daily web deals. The idea has spawned a number of spinoff websites, and one site in particular, blackmark-it.com, is dedicated specifically to black-owned businesses.

Christopher Nolen, an independent film director and producer calls the site the African American Community’s Groupon. “It’s a great way to give African-American business owners some notoriety and help them in this economy, says Nolen who immediately signed up for the site when he came across it.

“As a business owner and filmmaker, it’s incredible when I see other African-Americans helping each other in business. We need more of that.”

Officially launched today, the first deal featured on the site is a discount for 40 percent off tax-preparation services by Emerging Business Solutions Group, LLC  in Chicago. This deal will run for one week, as will the next three, then after the first month, the website’s creators plan to offer two deals per week and gradually increase to daily deals.

“We’re setting maximums (of deals) as low as 25 to 50 to make sure the merchants can meet the demand, and then we can revisit growth strategies,” says Natasha Williams, a marketing consultant at The Nielsen Company. She started the site with her husband Jamel, a truck driver who also manages their catering business, Covenant Café. “For many minority-owned businesses, advertising feels like more risk than a gain,” she says.

To help black business owners balance that risk, blackmark-it will only take 20-40 percent of the revenue from each deal, depending on the deal’s amount, the quantity sold, and other factors. In comparison, most daily deal sites take half of the cut. More than offering discounts on beauty services at nail salons and spas, or savings on meals at restaurants, the site also offers deals on professional photography services as well as books by up-and-coming authors.

Right now, the deals are mostly available in Chicago due to its high number of black-owned businesses but the couple plans to extend to other cities. This could be a great tool for minority businesses trying to get off the ground.

Do you support black-owned businesses? Would you check out blackmark-it.com?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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(San Jose Mercury News) – Online daily-deals originator Groupon was prepared Friday morning to debut as a public company, offering stock that would value the Chicago company at a total seen only once before in history for a technology company’s initial public offering.

Groupon filed Thursday to sell 35 million shares — about 5.5 percent of the company, a smaller percentage than is normally offered — at $20 apiece. That would set the company’s market value at $12.7 billion, the second-highest total in tech history to Mountain View Internet giant Google (GOOG), which had a valuation of $23.1 billion when it went public in 2004.

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by Cynthia Wright

Even though Groupon was one of the sole pioneers when it came to providing a way for companies to provide discounts over the Internet, even when others jumped on the discount bandwagon – Groupon’s brand seemed to remain intact.

So, it wasn’t that much of a shock in early June when Groupon announced their decision to go forward with a highly anticipated initial public offering (IPO) that would be finalized in late September. Unfortunately, for the discount brand – that wasn’t to be the case. Especially, since the company recently released a statement saying that they were postponing the IPO due to the market downturn and concerns brought forth by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

While some companies such as LinkedIn and Zillow have had shaky IPO starts, others like the music company Pandora have had it relatively easy – leaving some to wonder – is Groupon’s hesitation a sign of a bigger issue?

After all, the company’s missteps have been well known and documented since the awkward-bordering-on-insensitive advertisement that was broadcasted during the Superbowl. Outside of that, the company has also come under fire for its unusual accounting metric, the Adjusted Consolidated Segment Operating Income, which is seen as an unfair to measure their financial worth. Which, the SEC asked them promptly to remove prior to the company submitting their IPO application.

On top of that, the high marketing costs coupled with their unprofitable business model have potential investors raising their eyebrows. Although, some view Groupon’s business model as unreliable – it didn’t help that soon after, a memo penned by CEO Andrew Mason for his employees was “leaked” to the masses, which many saw as a violation of the SEC’s silent period mandate.

Surprisingly, it still wasn’t the first time Groupon had come close to breaking the quiet period rules. Especially, since the day after the company filed for the IPO, Groupon’s chairman and one of its biggest investors, Eric Lefkofsky, told Bloomberg that the daily-deal company was going t be “wildly profitable,” once the company officially went public.

Although, Groupon has yet to come out defending their case and with no apparent signs of road show on the horizon – it is hard to estimate how long it will be before the public hears Groupon’s take on the situation. In the meantime, it hasn’t been determined what effects this will have (if any) on investors when Groupon decides to eventually move forward with its IPO process. Either way, they are slowly emerging as a poster child for burgeoning entrepreneurs by showcasing the best way not to go public.

Cynthia Wright is an avid lover of all things geeky. When she isn’t freelancing, she can be found on her blog BGA Life and on Twitter at @cynisright.

(Creators.com) — “Social media” is the buzzword of the moment in online commerce, thanks largely to the success of “The Social Network,” a movie about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.  Just about every e-commerce website is looking to add a “social media” element and to find new ways to harness “the power of the collective” to create new business models.  One recent ripple in the “social media’ stream are online coupon promotion websites, the most popular of which are Groupon.com and LivingSocial.com.

There are subtle differences between the Web sites, but most work like this:
— You, a merchant with stuff to sell, contact the site and offer a special deal to your customers — an “exclusive” deal not available anywhere else — usually at a steep discount (50 percent to 90 percent off list price is not uncommon).
— The site posts your “deal,” with a specific end date (similar to an eBay listing), and people sign up for it.

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(Creators.com) — “Social media” is the buzzword of the moment in online commerce, thanks largely to the success of “The Social Network,” a movie about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.  Just about every e-commerce website is looking to add a “social media” element and to find new ways to harness “the power of the collective” to create new business models.  One recent ripple in the “social media’ stream are online coupon promotion websites, the most popular of which are Groupon.com and LivingSocial.com.

There are subtle differences between the Web sites, but most work like this:
— You, a merchant with stuff to sell, contact the site and offer a special deal to your customers — an “exclusive” deal not available anywhere else — usually at a steep discount (50 percent to 90 percent off list price is not uncommon).
— The site posts your “deal,” with a specific end date (similar to an eBay listing), and people sign up for it.

Read More…

CNNMoney.com recently compiled a list of apps that can help you save money by providing cost comparisons and pinpointing bargains on flights and gas. There’s even an app to help you avoid a speeding ticket! Check out these 9 apps that can help you have more control over your financial life.

Calcmoolator

This free app provides 43 different personal finance calculators.

Available on Android, iPhone, iPad

(Businessweek) — More than 60 million people subscribe to Groupon, the discount-coupon website, and the Chicago company says an additional million are joining every week. Shoppers clearly love the 50 percent to 90 percent savings they can snap up on smartphones. Small retailers that partner with the growing site and with such competitors as LivingSocial and BuyWithMe report mixed results.  Rice University marketing professor Utpal Dholakia surveyed 150 small businesses that undertook Groupon promotions from June 2009 to August 2010. He found the promotions profitable for 66 percent of the businesses surveyed and unprofitable for 32 percent. More than 40 percent indicated they would not run such a promotion again.

Groupon takes exception to Dholakia’s findings. “We run 900 deals a day and we’ve repeatedly polled 30,000 merchants, which is everyone we’ve worked with to date. When we ask, ‘Would you want to be featured again or recommend us to another merchant?’ 95 to 96 percent say ‘yes,’” says company spokeswoman Julie Anne Mossler. She says Dholakia polled businesses too soon, before they had a chance to calculate total return on investment on their deals. “His sample size was really, really small. Besides, we don’t position ourselves as a profitability machine,” Mossler says.  For some entrepreneurs, the promotions work well. Melissa Carias, 33, has twice offered half-off coupons through LivingSocial, gaining 14 regular clients for her dance fitness studio, Vivafit, in Guttenberg, N.J. “It’s so expensive to advertise. This is a way for me to reach new people and it’s my job to keep them around so they buy another package,” she says.

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(Online Journalism Review) — If you’re going to take on Groupon, you’re going to need to find a way to get more consumers in your market taking up your offers than are taking up Groupon’s. As any start-up online publisher knows, the most cost-effective way to spread the word about anything online is to get your readers to do your promotion for you.  Make it easy for your readers to redistribute your offers to their friends and family who might be interested in the deal, too. After all, if you’re trying to target better than Groupon, who knows better if a deal will appeal to someone than a friend or family member?

Read More…

Exclusive Partnership Makes Groupon Opportunities and Content Available through Bossip.com, MadameNoire.com, AtlantaPost.com, and Other Moguldom Digital Properties

NEW YORK – November 17, 2010 – Moguldom Media Group, an innovative new media company, today announced that it has signed a national agreement with Groupon, a shopping website that offers daily deals on local goods, services, and cultural events across the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Latin America. Visitors to Moguldom digital destinations such as Bossip.com, HipHopWired.com, MadameNoire.com, and AtlantaPost.com will see specially selected Groupon deals chosen with an eye toward the needs, preferences, and standards of Moguldom’s influential African-American audience.

By partnering with Moguldom, Groupon will help its network of businesses gain exposure, generate word-of-mouth, and win new customers among African-American consumers, a group whose economic significance has been growing significantly in recent years. African-American buying power increased more than 55 percent between 2000 and 2008, when it reached $913 billion, and is expected to reach  $1.2 trillion by 2013 (Nielsen). Moguldom digital properties, tailored to culture, news and commentary, women, fashion, and entertainment,  have helped the company build a thriving audience of thought leaders and opinion-makers whose influence extends throughout the diverse African-American community.

For members of the Moguldom audience, the agreement is the latest component of a rich digital experience which encompasses content, community, connections, and now commerce as well. Said Marve Frazier, Chief Creative Officer of Moguldom Media Group, “We see value and opportunity in leveraging our intimacy with our various audiences and bringing them quality deals from a premium partner such as Groupon. This exclusive partnership also allows us to take a step in developing diversification in our revenue mix with innovative approaches to e-commerce.”

Using the principles of collective buying, Groupon negotiates dramatically discounted deals with local businesses. Groupon subscribers receive free daily emails alerting them to the deals. These deals are only activated if a minimum number of people agree to buy, which encourages subscribers to share the promotion with family and friends via social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter. By guaranteeing a large number of new customers for participating businesses, Groupon creates a win-win for the merchants. This innovative approach to local commerce has generated millions in new revenue for local businesses and has saved subscribers more than $285 million.

About Groupon

Groupon, launched in November 2008 in Chicago, features a daily deal on the best stuff to do, eat, see and buy in more than 150 cities around the world. Groupon uses collective buying power to offer unbeatable prices and provide a win-win for businesses and consumers. For more information, visit http://www.groupon.com. To learn more on how to become a featured business on Groupon, visit http://www.grouponworks.com.

About Moguldom Media Group

Moguldom Media Group is an innovative multimedia company that develops and manages premium digital publishing brands that capture the pulse of divergent segments of African-Americans. Our leading brands are leveraged on multiple media fronts such as online video, mobile, radio, and social platforms such as Twitter.

(Chicago Tribune) — Groupon sees the $3.5 million incentive package Illinois recently gave the company to create 250 jobs as another sign it has arrived.  In separate interviews, President Rob Solomon and Brad Keywell, who helped seed the company, cited a long list of big-name, old-economy corporations that have received tax breaks. The list implied two things: First, Groupon is now in that league. And second, a lot of companies have received help — often by committing merely to retain jobs, rather than create them.  ”There’s a lot of important employers in Illinois,” Solomon said. “We want to be one of them.”