- What is RetailMeNot, and how does RetailMeNot work?
- How does RetailMeNot make money?
- Commissions From Retailers
- RetailMeNot’s Subsidiaries, Acquisitions, and Exits
- RetailMeNot’s profit and revenue
- What is the RetailMeNot business and revenue model?
- RetailMeNot’s funding and valuation
How does RetailMeNot make money if it’s free to use? Here is a full, in depth, breakdown of their main revenue stream and services they offer, as well as the RetailMeNot business model, their profit and revenue, and how RetailMeNot works.
What is RetailMeNot, and how does RetailMeNot work?
RetailMeNot is a service that offers shoppers coupon codes and cash back on their online purchases made.
Founded in 2006 by Guy King and Bevan Clark, RetailMeNot began trading on the NASDAQ on July 19, 2013, under the ticker symbol “SALE” before later delisting and getting acquired by J2 Global on September 29, 2020.
Now, RetailMeNot offers over 500,000 coupons for more than 50,000 retailers across their site.
How RetailMeNot works is: To use RetailMeNot, users can either download their Deal Finder browser extension or simply go to their website.
If it’s the website, users can simply click on any offer and copy the code. From there, they can paste that code into the promo code section of the store’s website at checkout.
As for users who downloaded the extension, they can just start shopping from anywhere online and Deal Finder will alert them when there are deals available.
Some of RetailMeNot’s competitors include Honey, Groupon, Ibotta, Swagbucks, Upside, Rakuten, and other coupon deal finders.


How does RetailMeNot make money?
According to RetailMeNot’s about page, RetailMeNot has facilitated over $4.3 billion in sales for partnering retailers and has had more than 650 million website visits in the last 12 months.
So how does RetailMeNot make money off of all that transactional volume and website traffic?
Below is a breakdown of how much money RetailMeNot makes and its revenue model. Including their main revenue stream and how much they charge for their services.
Here is how RetailMeNot makes money (in 2022):
RetailMeNot has a revenue model that makes money in just one (1) way – by getting paid commissions from retailers.
#1. Commissions From Retailers
RetailMeNot makes its money from getting paid commissions from its more than 50,000 partnering retailers.
How does RetailMeNot make money from commissions? RetailMeNot makes money every time a user clicks on and or makes a purchase from a link through their coupon service. From there, those partnering retailers then pay them through the marketing networks of their choosing.
As noted above, RetailMeNot has facilitated over $4.3 billion in sales for its partnering retailers. Of which, RetailMeNot gets paid a commission from all of it.


Note: It’s unclear how much money RetailMeNot makes in commission per sale and or click.
RetailMeNot’s Subsidiaries, Acquisitions, and Exits
Aside from RetailMeNot being acquired by J2 Global for $420 million, RetailMeNot has also had its own fair share of acquisitions.
To date, RetailMeNot, Inc. has made a total of 6 acquisitions.


RetailMeNot’s profit and revenue
RetailMeNot’s last released annual report as a public company was in 2016 where they reported $280.4 million in revenue. Which you can find that here in the SEC’s archives.
Since that time, RetailMeNot has not released any official reports in regards to company earnings.
Note: Because Ziff Davis, Inc., the parent company of RetailMeNot, is a publicly traded company, under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, they must file continuous financial filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). You can find all of Ziff Davis’ publicly released financial reports, including annual reports, through Ziff Davis’ investor section on their website.
What is the RetailMeNot business and revenue model?
RetailMeNot makes money through a few revenue models that they combine within their company, they are:
- Commission based business model
- B2B2C (partnerships) business model
- Mergers & acquisitions (M&A) business model
RetailMeNot’s funding and valuation
According to RetailMeNot’s Crunchbase profile, RetailMeNot has raised $299.5 million over 5 rounds.
RetailMeNot was acquired by J2 Global on Sep 29, 2020, for $420 million.