Welcome to Creators on the Rise, where we find and profile breakout creators who are in the midst of extraordinary growth. You can check out previous installments here.
Keesh Deesh has always loved a great deal.
Growing up, it was just her and her mom, and that’s where she got her good financial sense. “We would always find deals or she would be like, ‘Hey, let’s go do this thing. It’s on sale,'” she says.
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She carried those skills into adulthood. Like many people these days, she and her husband found themselves struggling to afford rent and food and bills, with expenses piling up. “We’re tired of living paycheck to paycheck, but we need necessities,” she thought. “I need to figure out how I can get necessities and not feel like I’m just drowning in my financial situation.”
That’s when she started couponing. TLC’s iconic show Extreme Couponing was her gateway. “I was like, ‘If they can do it, I should be able to do it as well. I’m pretty sure the whole show isn’t a scam. There has to be a way to do this,'” she says. She started finding deals for everyday essentials, and discovered that she, like the folks appearing on Extreme Couponing, could cut her grocery costs significantly–sometimes to the point where stores would pay her back for items she bought.
Word of her skills spread. People would call her asking for deals, and the more she looked for ways to help them, the more deals she found.
“I became the family go-to,” she says. “My family would call me and be like, ‘Hey, before I buy this, is it on sale? Before I make this purchase, before I take this trip, is it on sale?’ I’m like, ‘Well, I’ll look for you and I’ll find out.'”
With so many people interested in what she could do, she decided to start sharing her couponing hauls and the money-saving methods she used to secure them on Facebook. Now, four years later, the group (called Dollar Diva) has over 420,000 members. It experienced rapid growth during COVID especially, she says, when everyone was looking to cut costs and access essentials like cleaning supplies.
The group has become a full-time job for both Keesh Deesh–who posts over 100 links a week to deals on products, with some of them earning her affiliate marketing dollars–and her husband. And this year, she’s hoping to expand onto TikTok and YouTube, so she can spread the Dollar Diva wisdom there, too.
Check out our chat with her below.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tubefilter: Very nice to meet you! We talk to a lot of creators across a lot of niches, but we’ve never really spoken to somebody who does quite your kind of thing. I’d love to just start with super basic info. Tell me about you, where you’re from, and how you got started with having good financial sense.
Keesh Deesh: Well, man, I could start anywhere with that. Really my financial sense came from my mom. I know growing up with her and, the later part of my life after she divorced, it was just me and her for a while. We would always find deals or she would be like, “Hey, let’s go do this thing. It’s on sale.”
I really think it just was built into me from there. When I became an adult and started my own life and met my husband, it was like, “We’re tired of living paycheck to paycheck, but we need necessities. I need to figure out how I can get necessities and not feel like I’m just drowning in my financial situation.” Then I started couponing. That was probably in 2016. I watched the show Extreme Couponers and I was like, “If they can do it, I should be able to do it as well. I’m pretty sure the whole show isn’t a scam. There has to be a way to do this.”
I got into extreme couponing to where I would go to the store and they would pay me back after I got my groceries and my necessities. I even started dumpster diving and recycle bins. Everybody was always so interested. My family would call me and be like, “Hey, before I buy this, is it on sale? Before I make this purchase, before I take this trip, is it on sale?” I’m like, “Well, I’ll look for you and I’ll find out.” I became the family go-to. I was like, “Everybody else needs to save money as well.”
I started a Facebook group to just show my couponing hauls and how I could save money. Slowly but surely, it took four years for me to get to the following that I have. I just noticed that everybody else needed to save money like me as well. Even if it was a single parent, if it was a student, no matter what, it just feels good to save money. After that, starting the Facebook group, and COVID hit, pretty much. It was really hard for us to find essentials, hand sanitizer, Clorox wipes, things like that.
When that stuff would go in stock, I would share it with my Facebook friends, “Hey, right now Walmart just restocked on Clorox wipes.” It would sell out. Everybody would buy it. It’d be gone. I made it my priority to just help people find the things that they needed. After that, I stumbled across affiliate marketing. Of course, I would see it and be like, “I don’t know if it’s for me.” I had already pretty much built not like an audience, but we were all family.
The people in my group would be like, “Hey, can you find this?” I was like, “I’ll look for it. I’ll find it. I’ll post it.” They’d say, “Thank you so much for sharing. My kid needed this to go to college.” I started to dibble and dabble in affiliate marketing. The first program I went with was Amazon. It was really easy to sign up with Amazon. I actually had someone at Amazon reach out to me and said, “Hey, if you do this, you can actually make money from it by doing what you’re already doing in your group.” I was like, “Okay, I’ll test it out.”
I started posting my links and people would purchase it. I was like, “Wow, I’m actually making an income for helping people do what I’m going to do anyway.” Even if I didn’t have this audience, I’m still going to do this because it’s just something I truly love to do. From there, I got introduced to new companies. Companies reached out to me like Mavely. Mavely is absolutely my favorite. They’ve made being an affiliate marketer so easy.
Tubefilter: I feel like affiliate marketing, and how to do it well, is something that creators across all niches can struggle with. I know about it more from the company side than the creator side, so for you, what makes Mavely a good affiliate partner?
Keesh Deesh: They’re a good program because as soon as you jump in with their company, they assign somebody to you to really navigate you through the process. I have my own account manager. She’s always like, “Hey, do you need anything? Hey, guess what, this opportunity came up,” like speaking with you today. “We love the community you built.”
They have an app that is just super easy to navigate, to keep up with your numbers, to create links. Like you said, anybody in any niche can really affiliate market. If you are a beauty influencer and you use a certain lipstick, you can get an affiliate link for it. If people follow you and if you have the followers or the community and they purchase it, you can also get paid for affiliate marketing.
Tubefilter: What what led you to Facebook specifically? That can be an intimidating platform.
Keesh Deesh: Really about me, I know I’m young, but I feel like I was born 30. All the new social platforms, I didn’t really dive into. Facebook was just safe for me because I’ve had it forever. When I started the group, of course, I followed other groups online and they were very helpful. If I wanted to take a vacation or find something to do for my kids out here where I live, I’d be like, “Let me look and see if Facebook has a group about it.” It was really just me being in my own comfort zone.
I had no idea that things would turn out the way that they did and I would have over 400,000 followers. I had no idea that it would grow to that. It’s still growing every day, but it was just comfortable for me.
Tubefilter: How did your audience start building originally?
Keesh Deesh: My audience started building because, like I said, I was the go-to in my family. If I gained a follower and let’s say that they bought something and they saved money, sometimes we save up to 90% on items that we were going to have to purchase anyway. They’ll tell their family and their friends and be like, “Hey, guess what? You bought last week for $100. I bought it for $10.” They want to know how, why? “Oh, well, Keesh Deesh, you got to go follow her group. You have to follow her group.”
Not only was it word of mouth, but I like to give back. It’s just what’s in my nature, it’s why I like to share my couponing and my savings and deals. I do a lot of giveaways in my group, and they’re not like small giveaways. Every giveaway comes out of my own pocket. I don’t have anybody sponsoring my giveaways. I give away game systems. One time I gave away a luxury item. I gave away a Louis Vuitton bag. I went to the store and shopped for my followers and let them vote and pick the one. Then I gave it away. To me, it’s always feels better to give than to receive. I think that’s how I grew so fast.
Tubefilter: Very cool. What does the average week look like for you in terms of producing content for the group?
Keesh Deesh: A week, for me, it can be pretty busy. Actually, just six months ago, my husband, he really wasn’t even participating in my content creation, but then he jumped on board. Me and him were able to leave our full-time jobs and we do this full-time now. I always tell people, I retired my husband. They laugh about it because we’re both home.
We had to actually bring on two people to keep up with the volume, because a thing that I’ve noticed that my followers love is the consistency. If I ever ask them, “Hey, what do you guys like about my group?” they say consistency. Sometimes I do surveys and things for my group to make sure that I’m still growing my business and they like the consistency. A week for us is probably posting 100 links of all types of random things. My main goal is to just save money. I also share other things financially. It’s not just buying things. It’s like, I went through a housing program that saved me and my husband $10,000. I shared it with the group and, people were like, “Hey, we signed up. We love it. Thank you for this.”
It could be a car warranty. It could be a car service. It could be anything. A week is busy, but we have help now. It’s a little bit easier on us.
Tubefilter: That’s good. Bringing on help is a really big step. What did you do before this, career-wise?
Keesh Deesh: I worked for the post office as a manager. It was very scary to try to take that step and do this full-time so I can dedicate all this time to what I actually want to do. Ever since I took that step, it was so worth it. I had 11 years in the company and my husband had eight.
Tubefilter: Was there a trigger point for you to leave that job? Was it a certain amount of income, a certain amount of followers? How did things work for you?
Keesh Deesh: Yes, it was actually just a certain amount of income. I felt like if I made double what I was making at my job that I was at for 11 years, I would be comfortable enough to still provide for my family and make sure the kids are in all the activities they need to be in. That was my point where I had made that consistently for six months and I was like, “Okay, I think it’s time.”
Tubefilter: That still it’s very intimidating, but clearly it’s worked out for you. When did you go full-time?
Keesh Deesh: I left my job May of 2021, I believe.
Tubefilter: I wanted to ask, did the pandemic have a big effect on your audience?
Keesh Deesh: The pandemic helped my audience a lot because it’s that time where everybody needed to lean on everybody. People were losing jobs and getting laid off and the things that we needed to stay safe were hard to come by. No one wanted to leave their house and go get anything and risk contracting COVID. It really helped out what I was doing a lot, because they could get everything they needed delivered straight to their house. They would even say, “I’m never going to go to the store again. I come in here first, I use the search bar, I find what I need and I can just stay home.”
Tubefilter: That happened to me. I started using more coupons because I was shopping online for groceries.
Keesh Deesh: Exactly! They give you special codes and you’re like, “If I would’ve went to the store, I would’ve paid full price for this.”
Tubefilter: Totally. Yep. I’d like to get into your affiliate marketing a little bit more. Do you know roughly how many affiliate partners you work with?
Keesh Deesh: I am going to say about eight.
Tubefilter: In terms of income, do you find the majority of your income comes from a specific source? Does affiliate marketing play into it significantly?
Keesh Deesh: I’m trying to figure out how to answer that. There are things that, like I said, with Mavely, they make it so easy because you have your statistics. I can go in the app and I can say, “80% of the people in the group bought this. This is something that is really popular.” There’s things sometimes that I don’t even know exist. I find out they’re popular through my followers, “Hey, have you ever heard of this? Can you find it?” I’ll search it for them and I find it and it’s a hit for everybody.
That’s why affiliate marketing and the structure that Mavely has really benefits me in a way to where I don’t have to guess what people like. I have my statistics there.
Tubefilter: When it comes to selecting a new affiliate partner, how does that process work for you? What would be like an automatic no for an affiliate partner?
Keesh Deesh: An automatic no for me, would be anything that I feel is unsafe. Also with the boom of COVID, scamming really heightened as well. I wish I had a connect with Facebook because I probably have 100 fake profiles of myself now. When that started happening, I realized maybe I am doing something good. Maybe I’m going to keep this up. It made me feel secure myself to know that, “Hey, I’m not the only Keesh Deesh on Facebook.”
They’re stealing pictures. They’re stealing everything. They’re just acting like me to pretty much scam people. I will go through an affiliate program to see what stores they work with. If it’s just anybody, anything, something I haven’t heard of, like a verified source, that’s a no for me. Because one of my main goals is to make sure that when shopping with me, it’s a safe purchase. Your identity is not getting stolen. Your credit card information is not getting stolen. That’s one thing that I love about Mavely because all of their sources are reputable.
Tubefilter: I’m surprised that Facebook isn’t helping you take care of that problem.
Keesh Deesh: I don’t know how to get in contact. I’ve been asking like Mavely, “Do you guys have a Facebook connect?” Because it’s really, really bad. I would say there’s 50 fake profiles, 100 fake groups. They copycat my group entirely.
Tubefilter: The majority of people we speak with are on YouTube and they tend to have good creator support. I’m not as familiar with Facebook or how they liaise with creators.
Keesh Deesh: I have to post weekly reminders for people because I get almost 1,000 new followers a day. I have to post a weekly reminder, “Hey, these are my only social outlets. My website has all my social outlets listed. If somebody comes in your inbox and it looks like me and they’re asking you to pay for something or asking for your information, that’s not me.” I try to keep everybody up to date.
Tubefilter: Very interesting. I will put you in contact with somebody actually.
Keesh Deesh: Great.
Tubefilter: Have you asked your reps to help?
Keesh Deesh: I’ve asked my account manager. They’ve been really helpful because I’ve had the scam groups that I don’t know what they’re posting, but if I get into it, I can send them a link because it’s not that hard to sign up and get an affiliate account. I will send it to Mavely and they will backtrack it for me and they’ll be like, “Okay, we shut their account down.” They shut their Mavely account down, but they didn’t shut their Facebook account down. They could just apply under another name.
Tubefilter: I’m sorry you’ve been putting up with it. I had a couple more questions about your content. You post 100 links a week. How does the sourcing process for that work? Not to reveal your secret sauce.
Keesh Deesh: Honestly, I just really do a lot of the searching myself. Like I said, I do polls in my group, and ask people, “Hey, what are you interested in?” And I will maybe go on a website and just see if it’s on sale or try to find some secret coupons. So it’s really a lot of hard work for me in the background. I really have to put all my time into it, which is why I quit my job.
Tubefilter: Are you looking at bringing on another person?
Keesh Deesh: Maybe when we hit 500K, I might have to. But we’ll see, you know, you never know. You could post this article about me and then boom, I got to have a million followers. So I just take it one day at a time.
Tubefilter: Yes, it’s true. I was curious too. I know you have several of your own products. You have more traditional merch and then you have your digital planner as well, which is really interesting. I was curious if you were thinking about moving into any other products or any other business ventures tied to Dollar Diva?
Keesh Deesh: You know, I’ve had a lot of people ask me for like how-to guides. I’ve thought about it, but I just, I guess I don’t know where to start yet. But if I do anything, it would probably be a how-to to help people get into what I’m doing. Maybe a course or something like that. But that’ll be later in the future.
Tubefilter: I can see why. Have you been approached by publishers at all?
Keesh Deesh: Yes, I actually was just approached for January on the front of a magazine. I have a magazine centerfold already. And when I go out in public now–we travel a lot–I just went on a cruise and we were flying out of Miami and this lady stopped me and she’s like, “Are you Keesh Deesh Deesh? I’m in your group!” It’s like people all over the place. So my daughter, my 12-year-oldold is like, “Do I need to be a photographer today?” Because you know, people are starting to realize who I am and they’re like “Can you take a picture of us?” and she’s like, “I’m just a photographer.”
Tubefilter: Oh no. [laughs] It’s cool that you have such a widespread audience. Do you happen to know any geographic info? Like, are you mainly targeting people in the US? And do you feel like you have any international audience?
Keesh Deesh: I do have an international audience, not a huge one, but I have had people write me and say, “Hey, I’m out here in Canada,” or “I’m in the Bahamas and this was like 60% more than what you posted it for and you’ve helped me.” That is one of my future goals, to really be worldwide. What I would need to find out is how that works with retailers, because I know that, like if I go to a website, I have to switch to a different place other than the US, and then sometimes the prices change or just the whole setup. So I haven’t dove into it yet, but that is one of my future goals.
Tubefilter: What other things are you looking forward to, or what are your plans and goals do you have over the next or so to keep growing?
Keesh Deesh: The next year, honestly, my goal for the next year would be to get on more platforms other than Facebook and venture out there, because like I said, I’m just comfortable where I am. But I would love to explore TikTok or maybe YouTube or things like that and just get out there more. Definitely TikTok because I’m addicted to TikTok myself. And YouTube. So I want to get more into actual content creation.
Tubefilter: What has been your favorite thing about this whole being online thing and getting to interact with the kind of group you have?
Keesh Deesh: My favorite part of this process is really the community I built because I used to just feel like you know I was a shopaholic But now I get to share it with other people. We get to hype each other up, like, “Hey, look what I found! I got mine, too!” So I’ll post videos of like, “Hey, my items came in, I’ll do an unboxing.” And I have my followers there, I call them my family, and they’ll go, “Yeah, I bought one too. I got the same color.” We’re best friends. So that is one of my proudest moments, to be able to help people and have the community of like-minded individuals with me.
