Welcome to the HeyWhats Blog
Why we're starting this blog now, what you can expect to read here, and a quick map of where the writing is heading.
This is the first post. Most "welcome to the blog" pieces are throat-clearing, so we'll keep this one short and honest.
Why we're starting this blog now
HeyWhatsTheDeal is built on a clear thesis: local merchants should be able to publish deals on their own terms, keep the profits, and grow direct customer relationships without surrendering them to a marketplace. That's the anti-Groupon argument, and it's not a quiet one. If we believe the thesis, we should be willing to write about it — for the merchants we're built for, for the consumers we want to bring into the local-commerce conversation, and for an industry that's still figuring out what comes after the marketplace era.
So this blog has three jobs:
- Educate. Practical, tactical content for merchants — how to price a deal, how to write one that converts, how to think about the math when a prepaid marketplace comes calling with a "great offer."
- Engage. Lighter content for consumers — how digital vouchers work, where the best local deals actually live now, how to read fine print without getting burned.
- Lead the conversation. Bigger essays on where local commerce is headed, why the marketplace model is unbundling, and what merchant-owned infrastructure could look like.
What you'll see here
We'll publish bi-weekly for the first six months, then settle into a monthly cadence as the library gets deeper. Three categories you'll see across the top:
- For Merchants — strategic and tactical content for the people running real businesses.
- For Consumers — deal-discovery guides and platform basics for the people on the other side of the counter.
- Industry — the bigger-picture essays.
Subjects already on the runway include the real math behind a typical Groupon, an honest comparison of the alternatives for merchants shopping for a non-marketplace option, a decision framework for self-publish vs. prepaid marketplace, why voucher-based deals outperform coupon codes, and a manifesto-length piece on the unbundling of Groupon. Some of these will get LinkedIn excerpts. Some will get short-form versions for X. The canonical home is here.
A short note on tone
We'll write the way we'd talk to a merchant over coffee. Direct, honest about trade-offs, allergic to marketing-speak. When we have an opinion, we'll say so. When we don't, we'll say that too.
Glad you're here. If you want to be notified when posts go up, the easiest path right now is to follow us on LinkedIn or Instagram — that's where we'll share each new piece as it lands.
— The HeyWhats team
