personal finance in a coupon blog

At Savings.com, we work HARD. But we also like to play hard as well. After months of meetings and research and coding and testing, we launched the new and improved website. And last Friday we celebrated our accomplishment with a red and white themed party.

Our goal has always been straightforward: we want to help you shop smart. There are lots of coupon sites out there but our focus is providing quality deals, making the site easy to use and building a passionate community of "DealPros" who are always on top of the best deals.

I am proud to announce that with your feedback and a lot of hard work we made Savings.com faster, easier and even more fun to use.

Here are some highlights of our new site:

Despite the sweltering summer heat in the San Fernando Valley yesterday afternoon, almost 300 people showed up to attend BargainBabe's Frugal Fe$tival. The Fe$tival took place in Woodley Park in Van Nuys, and the park's little picnic area was filled to the brim with expert and amateur coupon hunters alike who were looking for tips, tricks and ways to save a buck or two.

Well everyone, it's nearly time. BargainBabe's Frugal Fe$tival is upon us. This Sunday, July 26th, the frugal folks of Los Angeles will flock to Woodley Park in Van Nuys to meet up and converse about saving money and about, well, being frugal.

I'm gonna let you in on a secret: Our team has been working like crazy for the past several months re-designing Savings.com from the ground up. In addition to a whole new look you will find the new Savings.com faster, easier and even more fun to use. Here are some things that you can look forward to:

For the past two weeks, we've been running a Twitter Roomba contest. Everyone that followed our new Twitter account @savings and everyone that RTed (retweeted, for those of you who are not Twitter lingo savvy) one of our posts has been entered into the drawing to win a brand new iRobot Roomba 530 robot vacuum cleaner.

We amassed 382 followers at our new Twitter account, and many of those followers RTed us during the course of the contest. When all was said and done, we had 529 entries. We used random.org to choose a winner from our list of entries. And the winner is...

It's about time for our annual trek cross country to NYC for LinkShare Symposium East. This has always been a must attend industry event for us primarily because of the massive amount of networking opportunities it presents. For 2009, the event is once again sold out and we are going full bore as one of the proud sponsors.

As an addendum to our 30 Deal Hunters to Follow on Twitter blog post we recently released, I want to let you know about the team of Savings.com DealPros that's out there in the Twitterverse spreading coupons and deals to the masses.

Each of our deal hunters has a specific area of expertise, so when you follow one (or all) of them, you'll be getting the very best deals for that specific category. They're also there for you to request deals from. Looking for a deal on something in particular? Let them know and they'll do their darnedest to find you the best deal on what you want.

Without further ado, our Savings.com DealPros are:

Some of us here at the Savings.com office celebrated National Bike to Work Day by--what else?--biking to work! From left, Jacob H., Sheryl and Jacob S. all did their part cutting down on carbon emissions (for what it's worth, I WALKED to work!) by cycling to the office instead of driving.

For Jacob H. and Sheryl, it was a breezy 1-3 mile ride, but Jacob S. put us all to shame by navigating his way to Santa Monica from the Mid-Wilshire section of Los Angeles with a NINE mile ride.

Way to go, Jacob S.!

Photos, videos, blogs...these things are typically what comes to mind when you think of online communities. There are groups of people out there sharing everything from ridiculous photos of their cats to opinions on and reviews of restaurants in their area. I'd like to introduce a new type of community to you...a community of people dedicated to saving each other money by sharing, commenting on, and voting on coupons and deals.

We know our smart, savvy community knows how to find great deals online, and it looks like others are joining the revolution. Last week (Thursday, February 19th) the Chairman of ComScore (Gian Fulgoni) gave his review of online retail from the 2008 holiday season. He was very clear that he believes online coupon sites have reached the "tipping point" and have achieved mass acceptance. He highlighted "coupons" as one of the largest growing search terms with 157% growth from December 2007 to December 2008. In this same time period, Savings.com grew over 300%. It's great to see the entire industry growing and to know our community is helping people find the best deal on whatever they're looking for. It's even better to see us growing faster than any other major coupons site....