With Black Friday rapidly approaching, there are plenty of deals coming out that are making saving money during the holiday season easier and easier. This time last year, the recession was in its infancy and companies were still trying to figure out the way to attract new customers. During the holiday season of 2008, plenty of people were looking for deals. In fact, Savings.com saved people almost $4.4M* during the holidays in 2008. The most popular category was electronics and Savings.com's electronics deals saved users over $1.5M.

Consumers are obviously holding onto their hard-earned dollars and making sure to get the most bang for the buck when they do decide to spend money. We've seen some places where consumer purchasing behavior has changed drastically during this year, and we predict that, in order to lure consumers into buying, some retailers are going to have to work overtime to provide good deals.

Based on the data we're observing, there are some areas we think are going to be good places to find deals before the end of the year.

The recession has hit all retailers hard. Will "Black Friday" be the cure for the economic downturn doldrums? Or will it be a game of chicken between retailers and shoppers waiting out the flurry of holiday sales and promotions in hopes of scoring the deepest discounts?

As we begin to come out of the worst part of the recession and enter the vital holiday season, there are trends appearing every shopper should keep in mind:

Since our community is such a vital part of Savings.com, I wanted to do a little recap of how much money our members have saved each other. Since April when we opened the doors for members to submit deals, people have submitted tons of deals to our site. So how much money have they saved each other?

Drum-roll please!

Yesterday I blogged about saving with coupons and talked about the different kind of deals (site-wide, category and product) and discounts (percent off, dollar off and free shipping). Today I'm going to explain which deals save you the most money and why--as well as how to find them.

So of the three types of deals, which kinds work the best?

Since our website has thousands of different coupons and discounts people are always asking: "How can I save the most money?" "What types of coupons work the best?"

So here are some suggestions to help you save the most while using the coupons and deals at Savings.com.

At Savings.com, we celebrate coupons on a daily basis. But we were still stoked to hear that September is National Coupon Month. We're not surprised that an entire month had been dedicated to coupons--given the steady rise of usage we've witnessed over the last months.