Blogger Ettiquette: Sharing Deals

Just wanted to share a few words about what is acceptable as far as sharing deals from other great money saving blogs on your site.

Don't be deceived: 
You NEED to site your sources. At first glance it may seem like it is a free for all, you see a deal on one blog and then you see the same deal on 10 more blogs. You will just put it on your blog, seems like public knowledge anyway. Don't be mistaken it is not a free for all, just like in 10th grade English you need to site your sources. A lot of those deals have links to sources if you keep reading.

I am always disappointed to see blogs that post a ton of deals and never seem to site any sources for where any of their deals come from. To me it seems a little dishonest and those sites always lose me as a reader.


Always Site Your Source:
Preferably with a link. If you found a deal on a blog you frequent, go ahead and post the deal (in your own words) on your blog. Then leave a link back thanking the blog where you found it. Maybe your readers will find some more deals there. Plus, wouldn't you want them to do the same if they found a deal on your site?

Don't worry most bloggers don't mind and are usually happy for the traffic your blog might generate for them.

Be careful of some post that say "do not copy" In this case it usually acceptable to post a direct link to this deal on your site, without sharing the majority of the content.

Never paste pictures as a URL from another blog: This is stealing bandwidth, and will cost the bloggers money, instead copy and past the picture into your own paint program and use your own hosting site, to post it on your blog. (don't forget to leave credit for a photo especially if it is a photo someone took of a store shelf sale)

Careful about Copying Links: This is up to you I suppose, but you should know that most links on money saving blogs that take you to a coupon printing site, or an online shopping site (including places like amazon/target/kohls/walmart) are usually referral or commission links. So you may want to fix some links to take you directly to the site.

How To Find Unique Deals:

• Sign up for a lot of newsletters and "like" a lot of facebook pages, this way a lot of great offers will show up in your inbox and newsfeed. That's how I hear about a lot of free samples.

• Go shopping. Research can be fun, see what's going on locally and what deals you can match up with coupons and then share with your readers.

• Read the newspaper, local magazines, and sales circulars.

• Do the Work: Store matchups usually take me a couple of hours per store, going through the circular and then searching through a coupon database. But I find a lot of great deals this way, a lot of which I can use, and a lot that are worth sharing.

I haven't been blogging a whole year yet and am certainly no expert, but 'sharing' was one of the first things I made sure to do my research on. I wish I had found a post like this when i was looking into it, and I hope this helps someone.