The site has more than 60,000 mobile coupons from around the country. 8coupons.com is also offering an $888 credit, or 100 days, to all businesses that try the self-service mobile-coupon platform.

“The biggest challenge is getting the word out there to local merchants,” said Landy Ung, cofounder/CEO of 8coupons.com, New York. “Right now we’re approaching 1 million unique users, but the majority is still in New York City.”

Ms. Ung said that a lot of traffic comes from the search content side and the biggest challenge is reaching the local merchants and showing them the mobile-coupon platform.

8coupons.com is an online destination for mobile coupons and deals on places to eat, drink, shop and other location-based services.

Attracting local merchants
Consumers can redeem the mobile coupons by showing their mobile phone to the cashier or waitress.

8coupons.com also provides communities with a user-generated-content platform to share and find deals in their neighborhood.

When a consumer visits 8coupons.com, the map on the homepage will automatically populate the top-eight most popular deals based on the consumer’s IP address.

8coupons.com said that this ensures that anyone who visits the site will see the deals that are most relevant to them specifically.

The top-eight deals will change as the user moves the map around to different locations, zooms in on a specific street or narrows down the deals by sub-categories such as restaurants, entertainment, beauty and spas, services and shopping.

8coupons.com offers a self-service mobile-coupon platform for small businesses nationwide.

The site also features user-submitted deals such as the specials at their local bar or their local sandwich shop.

8coupons.com has partnered with Valpak, Money Mailer and RedPlum’s SuperCoups, as well as with several local bloggers and content partners to add more than 50,000 local deals nationwide.

New York’s Cold Stone Creamery at Astor Place partnered with 8coupons to offer 8-cent ice cream scoops to its customer base.

The campaign, “Ocho Loco,” was intended to help spread the word about the Cold Stone Creamery. The promotion asks customers to send coupons from 8coupon.com to their mobile phone and redeem it by showing the cashier their phone (see story).

Ms. Ung said that from personal experience, mobile coupons are about convenience.

“Everybody is looking for coupons, either for dry cleaning or pizza, or whatever, but they may be misplaced,” Ms. Ung said. “Or when you’re walking around the city looking for pizza and you need the coupon now and don’t have it with you – mobile gives you the ability to access when and how you want it.”