Giveaways are wonderful, fantastic, and everyone loves them, right? As a blogger though, it isn’t always clear to know how to start running Giveaways. As our readership grows, companies start finding us, and “pitching” us – but when we start, we find ourselves fumbling around and not knowing who can help guide us. Who will welcome contact from us, and who would be interested in working with us?

Sara of “Deal”icious Mom and I teamed up today to create a group within the Mom Bloggers Club called Pitch It To Me. (Edit 4/16/10 – We now have our own Ning!)

“Do you want to find those companies that are willing to work with bloggers? Looking for new opportunities and partnerships? Need tips or have questions about how to get started reviewing products? Want to pitch your products to some great bloggers?

If you are a blogger who is interested in running Giveaways, I welcome you to join, and invite your fellow bloggers as well!

And for companies, you’ve got several options! If you welcome contact from bloggers interested in reviewing your products (and hosting associated giveaways), you can join too! You may either join directly and start conversational threads letting others know when you are ready to run a few Giveaways, or, you can provide your contact information to me via my contact form and ask that it be shared in this group. If you contact me via my form, please let me know if you are interested in me running a giveaway, or if you are contacting me to have your information posted in the Pitch It To Me group.

Thank you very much to Sara for taking the lead on this group and co-moderating it with me! And by the way, Sara’s site “Deal”icious Mom, is fantastic and FULL OF DEALS so I highly recommend you check it out!

Join Pitch It To Me!

I am very pleased to announce the official launch of The Giveaway Gal – a new sister site to Dealafina. The Giveaway Gal, a giveaway listing site, will publish new giveaways each and every day! You will be able to discover new Giveaways occurring all over the internet, with eligibility ranging from US Only, to International acceptance.

The Giveaways listed on The Giveaway Gal are hosted elsewhere, which allows for more time to devote to just Giveaways. Dealafina will continue to host sponsored Giveaways, and in fact, there are several already scheduled to occur over the next few weeks. So don’t fret, Giveaways are not leaving Dealafina! In fact, by having a Giveaway sister site, you can expect more Giveaways HERE in the near future. So please don’t worry, there is a lot more planned for Dealafina!

For Giveaway enthusiasts, if you head over to The Giveaway Gal you will find recently published Giveaways that include prizes ranging from a $15 Amazon gift card, all the way to a $1400 jogger stroller (Zigo Leader X2). Simply find what you like, and hop on over to the Giveaway host so you can enter to win.

For fellow bloggers, you may submit the Giveaways you are hosting either through the Submit a Giveaway form, or the Win it Wednesday Linky.

And last but not least, you may also follow The Giveaway Gal via the Facebook Page, or Twitter.

And now, back to our regularly planned schedule of deal finding!

Have you received your Census survey in the mail? In the spirit of survey season, have your say about what you read about on Dealafina! I know you have your favorites – that part is easy to predict. But predicting what your favorites are, well that’s another matter entirely!

Well guess what? Now you can tell me exactly what type of posts you prefer and want to see more often! Off to the side right of this post, I’m sure you see the “Never Miss a Deal!” email subscription box – so take a look just under that box. Yep, that box that says “Have Your Say!” – that’s what I’m talking about.

I think you know what to do. But if not – go vote!

In effort to help save you some time (and money!), you can now start your pre-shopping-coupon-code search on Dealafina. Off to the right in the sidebar, you will notice a new item called “Coupon Codes and Price Drops” with a few categories already listed!

The categories are self-explanatory, and within them you will find listings that range from Apple, to Wal-Mart – with coupon codes, online sales, and free shipping. These online coupon codes are updated automatically, on a daily basis.

New shops will continue to be added, and, when I find super cool deals I will publish them in a normal blog post just as I have been doing.

And on that note, happy shopping!

Dealafina is undergoing some planned maintenance this weekend as the site is moved to a new web host, so there will be no updates on the site from now until Monday. Hopefully everything will still be available and accessible to read, but if it is not – don’t worry! This is only a short break and everything should be back to normal soon.

In the mean time, if you haven’t subscribed to get updates sent directly to you – this is a great time to subscribe!

You can get email updates right to your inbox and never miss another deal! Just click this link to subscribe by email. You can also get updates in your favorite RSS reader, or join in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

Have a great weekend!
~ Sharon