One industry doing well: online coupon sites

USA Today is reporting that the one big winner in today's economy is online coupon sites: this winter, according to Simmons Market Research Bureau, 38.6 million Americans will use online coupons, up 22% from the same period last year.

I'm hardly surprised, having written for WalletPop about many of the coupon sites the paper mentions in its article, such as Coupons.com and BradsDeals.com.

In fact, there are so many sites out there -- Rather-Be-Shopping.com, RetailMeNot, CurrentCodes.com -- that coupon shopping is arguably becoming something of a sport. I saw that last weekend. My wife and kids and I were hanging out with some friends, and when we began talking about the economy, I asked one of them, Kim Johnson, about coupons.

And suddenly she's rushing into another room and back and pulling out a giant photo album, crammed with coupons.