One of the great things about the Internet is that it heightens competition for the consumer dollar, making just about everything more affordable.

As online shopping options expand and buyers grow more comfortable navigating retail pages, a new cottage industry has developed.

Web sites such a Currentcodes.com, DealHunting.com, CouponCabin.com and

NaughtyCodes.com now chase down the best Internet retail sales and promotions for shoppers.

"The idea is to put all the promotional codes on one site," says Barry Boone, 38, one of the concept’s pioneers who lives outside of Tulsa, Okla.

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Boone and his former wife, Maggie McBane, got into the business of posting coupons and promotional codes on a private Web page, primarily for friends and relatives. From there, the couple’s Owasso, Okla.-based operation mushroomed. They introduced Dealhunting.com in June 2000, followed by Currentcodes.com in 2001.

"It took about six months of getting passed around by word of mouth to get going," says Boone, who worked for Creative Labs in Stillwater, Okla., at the time. "A year later, we were getting a healthy following."

Among companies who offer discounts on CurrentCodes.com is MotorcycleUSA, an Internet accessories seller based in Medford.

MotorcycleUSA Marketing Manager Erick Barney says coupon and promotion code sites are very effective.

"When people make their purchase on our site, they check out what types of coupons are available and apply them," Barney says. "We’ve been doing it for a couple of years now. It’s definitely been effective."

Eventually, retailers became big fans and have turned the promotion and coupon sites into big money makers themselves.

"Early on, stores didn’t know what to make of us," Boone says. "We were taking their promotional codes and putting them out for the world to see. But after they realized the demand, they began to work with us and, in a lot of cases, supply us with coupons."

Boone says a couple of stores sent letters from their legal departments, asking that references to their products be taken off the site — or else.

"We generally comply," Boone says. "Usually someone more enlightened would catch wind of it, and in a month or two, the company got back to us and said we would love to work with you."

One such company was Medford-based gift purveyor Harry and David.

"They are very protective of their brand and don’t like to be connected with discounters or anything," Boone says. "We were a tiny little company and took them down. A couple of months later they approached us and said we were working with the demographic that they wanted to reach out to. We can promote their sales, but we just can’t call it a ‘discount.’"

Boone says earlier in the year, his sites experienced an average of 12,000 unique hits, but that average has bumped to 40,000 daily.

"Around Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving when retailers finally reach profitability), we were somewhere in the neighborhood of 75,000 visitors."

Boone’s sites have a half-dozen employees scattered throughout the Midwest and East and are associated with 1,100 stores, up from 800 a year ago. He says the company’s revenue will top $1 million for the first time this year.

"It’s basically doubled every year for the last three or four years," Boone says.

While Currentcodes and its related sites generate revenue via commission, CouponCabin of Hoffman Estates, Ill., outside Chicago, generally gets paid a flat rate by stores.

Company founder Scott Kluth, 28, worked in Internet sales at Sears headquarters before launching CouponCabin in 2002.

CouponCabin deals with between 2,600 and 3,000 coupons and discounts at any given time. The site averages 55,000 unique hits per day and is working with 804 companies, up from 500 a year ago. The company has 16 employees, mostly in the Chicago area. Kluth won’t reveal revenue figures for CouponCabin, but says that the company will generate between $50 million and $60 million for its retailers this year.

"This is the next wave of Internet marketing," Kluth says. "From the consumer perspective, there is still a learning curve. We’re still getting lots of e-mails from people who print out our pages and then take them into stores. When the store doesn’t accept them, they write and say, ‘You guys are a fraud.’ "

Reach reporter Greg Stiles at 776-4463 or e-mail business@mailtribune.com.