I’m one of the most active StealTheDeal users you’ll meet, they sent my parents curling and last year they (against all logic) encouraged me to fly a plane. But I’ve started filtering the emails away to a folder, and I’m checking it less and less.
There are two basic ways to use deal sites (these aren’t how these sites are sold to businesses, but my non-scientific survey shows only two use patterns):
- Wait for something you’d buy anyway, I got $5 off a restaurant I go to once a month or so.
- Be surprised and buy something you hadn’t thought of:
Flying lessons — did you know you can just sign up and they let you fly a plane? (Take to the skies! 2 private flying lessons for $193 at Aviation Int (Canada) in Guelph! ).
Curling lessons + food, total impulse buy (For $12 Two People Will Receive 1 Night of Curling + Appetizers and Beverages at the Guelph Curling Club ($45 Value)).
Yoga whichI still haven’t gone toI went to once, another impulse buy (Invigorate yourself with 2 weeks of unlimited yoga for $13 at Moksha Yoga Guelph ($30 Value))
One thing that I don’t do is change my habits because a restaurant that’s 20 minutes away bacame $5 or $10 cheaper.
WagJag sees to be growing faster through partnerships with newspapers — I’m told anyway, I didn’t realize newspapers still existed 
Which meant a lot more people had heard of it, but beyond calling Groupon “one of those WagJag like things” I haven’t found anyone who’s made the transition from newspaper to buying the deals online.
But what’s really interesting is the trend towards making deal sites a commodity with Deal Co-op a product for building your own group-on style deal site. You can see one at deals.feld.com where Brad Feld offers group deals to his blog readers every Tuesday (Brad is an investor in the company.
