The Krazy Coupon Lady

Back when “how to coupon” advice was locked behind paywalls, Heather Wheeler had an aha-moment. But first, she needed a partner-in-crime.

So she pitched her krazy idea to former college roommate and bestie, Joanie Demer; just a simple heist (that wasn’t an actual heist, of course): let’s time a store’s sale with a manufacturer coupon, and walk out like we practically robbed the place (but didn’t actually, of course).

“It’s all about finding things that are on sale, and then stacking them with the available manufacturer coupons,” Heather explains. “Time your purchases right, save a fortune. Then rinse and repeat.”

Joanie was the skeptic of the two, or “captain skeptic,” she jokes. But after rolling her eyes at the idea for over a month, she finally agreed to stage this high stakes operation with Heather.

And it worked!

“We were hooked right off the bat,” Heather says. Joanie went home, spun up a Blogspot, and overnight a small but mighty site was born. “I called it The Krazy Coupon Lady,” Joanie thinks back, “but Krazy with a ‘k.”

Weeks later, Joanie was doing some of her usual heavy-duty couponing at a local grocery store, when she happened upon a fellow shopper carrying the very same five-inch-thick binder that she was — a telltale sign that she had stumbled upon another coupon lady in the wild. Lo and behold, the woman also spotted Joanie (and her coupon binder), leaned in and winked: “oh, so you’ve heard about the Krazy Coupon Lady, too, eh?”

That’s when they knew they were onto something. Word was getting around. So they decided to put in a site meter on their blog to see for themselves what kind of traffic they were getting.

It turned out, there were roughly a thousand readers a day. “We thought it was just family and friends. Well, we didn’t have that many family and friends…” they joked.

After that, they flipped on their first Google ad and saw a whopping grand total of 78 cents a day. “Woohoo,” Joanie laughs, remembering back.

But then came a big “what if.”

What if they decided to go all in, could it turn into say, $700 a month each? “That was my whole mortgage payment,” Heather calculated at the time. And just like that, another plan was hatched.

Cue the highlight reel montage: a book came first (Pick Another Checkout Lane, Honey), followed by national TV spots like the The Today Show, an appearance on Good Morning America, a feature on TLC’s Extreme Couponing, a couponing competition on Dateline, even a visit to The Martha Stewart Show. Not only that, but the crew was growing, and the operation was getting bigger and bigger… fast.

As they look toward the future, they’re focusing on the same north star like they always have: helping shoppers save at the register.

That means making the app even more useful and automated for all those in-store shoppers (so long, five-inch thick binders), while continuing to churn out helpful content, whether by email, on the site, or in video form.

Most of all, it means keeping the content, regardless of the format, free and accessible to all. And ads help them do just that.

They help fund the free how-tos, the checklists, the “here’s exactly how to stack this with that” hacks, and the late-night edits before Black Friday doorbusters.

The best part of it all? “Helping people feel confident and in control of their money. There’s something really powerful about showing someone how to save on things they already need — and watching that turn into a habit that gives them breathing room, freedom, even joy. We love hearing, ‘I never thought I could coupon, but now I can’t stop.’ That transformation never gets old.”