Posts Tagged ‘shopping’

Video: Automated online bargain hunting

March 20th, 2009 •
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Grab the savingsOnline shopping has opened up for many of us a shopping world that was totally alien before it. Online retailers are competing with every other store you can think of which makes the competition fierce. They also sell large quantities of items which opens up room for deep discounts never before imagine by B&M retailers. Computers and the Internet also make it easier to shop. Here is a technique that automates the entire bargain hunting process. If you want something and a have a few weeks to wait, use this procedure, and there’s a good chance you’ll find a deal you never thought possible.

First, you’ll need a Gmail account. If you already have one, you’ll probably need an additional one. Second, you will need a Yahoo account for use with Yahoo Alerts.

Use the procedure described in the video, sit back, and watch the deals roll in!

 

Here are some great feeds to subscribe to in order to get the most out of this system:

That should get you started. If you find other feeds I may have missed, please post them in the comments. Thanks for watching. I’ll have a new episode on April 3rd.

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Recession relief: Getting geek on the cheap

February 23rd, 2009 •
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As an Internet user, you should know you never have to pay retail for almost any gadget you might want. Internet retailers can sell much cheaper and they discount much more aggressively than their brick-and-mortar counterparts. Here are some of my favorite sites for getting great deals on geek sustenance—games and gadgets.

Games

Cheap Ass GamerCheapassgamer.com- Maybe you want to save $5 or $10 on a game that’s launching soon. Maybe you want to find a heavy discount on a game that’s been out for a few months. Maybe you want the details on an upcoming game clearance at a retail chain. Cheapy D and the forum folks at CAG will hunt down the craziest deals and provide you with all the details. This site has been around for a while, and I don’t think they ever really miss. If there’s a deal, check out these forums and you will find it.

Cheap College GamersCheapCollegeGamers- Another forum for gaming deals. I only discovered this one recently. My favorite thing about it: the RSS feed is updated more frequently than that of Cheapassgamer and hits more of the deals where CAG only includes maybe one stellar deal per week. This feed has multiple deals every day. A great candidate for your Google Reader.

half.comHalf.com- eBay bought this site a few years ago. Almost yearly, eBay announces the site will be shut down, but the users just aren’t having it. So, the site survives. It is a marketplace for games, movies, books, and music. It’s sorta like eBay, but everything is Buy-it-now. All the auction foreplay is dispensed with. One really nice feature is the pre-order feature (now called Match My Price). Go to an item page, click Match My Price, and enter your desired price. When a seller lists an item, they will see they can sell it immediately for your requested price. If they choose to do so, it’s over. The item is yours and they are paid. You can set expiration for your pre-order for as little as two weeks, and you will receive e-mail updates to remind you that the pre-order is active. You can also manually cancel it at any time.

Gadgets and Gear

woot!Woot- I’ve covered this one before, but this article cannot pass without mentioning it. Woot will give you one daily deal on a product. Most products are geek-friendly although there is the occasional golf club or espresso machine.

slickdealsSlickdeals.net- The site has deals on all types of items, but much of what is posted is tech related. The RSS feed is great, but I find the deals are sometimes expired by the time they hit my reader. I guess if you really want to be thorough, you will have to keep the site open and spam refresh.

hardforum[H]ard|Forum- These are the forums of an excellent computer hardware site HardOCP. Check out the Hot Deals and the For Sale/Trade forums for nice prices on computer hardware and gadgets. You may find some gaming stuff here too. I actually came away with a 3DO console for practically nothing.

I know there are many more sites I may have missed. That’s where you come in! Post in the comments your favorite deals sites or even techniques for getting great prices on your geek gear. You may see an episode of the podcast in the coming weeks with some advanced online shopping techniques that will completely automate the process of finding deals online! Subscribe to the site feed or the podcast (iTunes) to stay informed.

If you aren’t wooting, our relationship is over

January 31st, 2009 •
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woot
Image by sensesmaybenumbed via Flickr

wootI’ve enjoyed these last couple of weeks. I really have. We really have a lot in common. I assume we have at least a little in common too; otherwise, why would you be here? But, there’s a problem: you’ll never understand my daily pilgrimage to the various woot sites to find today’s insane deal. You can’t understand because you just aren’t wooting yourself! You won’t know what it means to wake up and see the lights on the page meaning two things:

  1. It’s a woot-off.
  2. You’re not going to get anything accomplished today.

I feel your pain. I once was an innocent babe with no concept of what woot was. Luckily, there is something you can do to salvage our relationship. Check out woot.com, sellout.woot, wine.woot, and shirt.woot today to see what the deals are. You may not see anything you like so keep checking throughout the upcoming week. If you’re a geek (and you must be) you are bound to find something within a week’s time that you absolutely must have and is 30% cheaper than any other online retailer.

If you can’t learn and come to understand my relationship with woot, I’m afraid we will have to cut this whole thing off right here. That’s right, you’re going to need to find another blog. I just can’t think of another way out of this!

Actually, you’re welcome to stick around, woot-fan or not, but you should really check it out. I can’t think of anyone I’ve told about it who didn’t immediately become addicted. Enjoy!

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