Adam wrote to me about their latest website, Trezr.com (pronounces “treasure” apparently). It is a social bookmarking website, where members are free to create links to the best bargains they have found on the web. From its about page,

Trezr links to the best sale and discounted items on the web each day: designer shoes, digital cameras, cashmere sweaters, travel deals you name it. Youll also find coupon codes to stores all over the web and helpful tips for saving money.

It is actually very similar to dealplumber which I looked at two months ago. Very similar concept — user generated content, user contributed rating, everyone is free to participate, etc. In many ways they are indeed very similar. For example, 3 equal width column on the home page showing the latest deals and coupons. However, there are quite a few differences.

First of all, I gotta say that Trezr.com looks better. It has got all the gradients, rounded corners and every other style clue a Web 2.0 site should have. While dealplumber always list the deals submitted by its users in a reverse-chronological order, Trezr can push deals to be listed on the home page from how many times its users “trezr this” the deal. Or “dugg” the item if you are familiar with the terminology of another popular social news site. When a deal/coupon gets submitted, there’s a silver coin icon displayed next to it, and it has very short life time on Trezr. Once more people voted for a deal/coupon, it becomes a gold coin, and will stay in the system for up to 3 months. Very interesting implementation to keep the ssytem “clean”.

With dealplumber, you can categorise your deals by “tagging” them. On Trezr however, there’s a only fixed list categories that you can choose from, and it is not as flexible as free-form tagging.

However, one of the biggest difference I saw between the two systems are their ways of attracting users to post. On dealplumber, you are encouraged to post your referral links, so that if someone made a purchase by following your link, you might be paid by the ads network. It surely has helped dealplumber generating a large number of listing. However, from what I can tell many of them are simply containing references to their Amazon affiliates account, or Commission Junction affiliation links. People posted everything in hope that some of them will be clicked, and maybe some people might make a purchase. At the end, the quality of those links is not great, and I won’t even consider some items posted on dealplumber should be classified as “deals” or “bargains”.

On the other hand, Trezr.com forbids people from posting affiliation links. They need to link directly to the product page. It actually generated quality links, instead of few selected users spamming the entire site. However, users are free to supply their own Google AdSense account number to participate in a revenue sharing scheme.

There are actually some very good links to deals and tips, many of them are even free. For example, About.com: Ten Steps to Becoming a Pro at Haggling — great tips for bargain hunters, and I found it as it has been voted 5 times on Trezr.com. However, at least for those who are regular readers of this blog, the majority of deals on Trezr.com (and dealplumber.com) are of little use, as they are not Australian specific.

Maybe someone should start a similar site for us Aussies?