Where to find the best bargains and deals online

June 27, 2007 in deals and bargains

I haven’t posted anything in awhile, I’ve gotta get back into the groove of posting on a regular basis. I wanted to talk a little bit about deals online. I’ve been shopping online since 98-99, and there are just tons of sites out there looking to give you a compilation of the greatest deals out there. But there are two sites that I’ve used consistently for the last 5-6+ years. This is not a paid endorsement in any way – I use these sites all the time.

The first one is woot.com. Woot is a weird one, they basically only sell one thing per day – and it’s something they have a surplus of. It’s run by the same guys that do geeks.com, so most stuff is probably a surplus of what they have from that site. Besides the unique one product offering per day (until it sells out), every single thing has only $5 shipping. It doesn’t matter if it is a flash drive or a 20lb package with stereo speakers – it’s still $5 (per item ordered). Usually the item of the day is discounted 50% or more to move them fast. They sell everything from mp3 watches, to hard drives, projectors, video cards…I even saw a grill utensil kit once. Most stuff is pretty geeky, but I’ve seen vacuum cleaners and blenders too. I bough my wireless G router on there for $20 almost 5+ years ago (when they were 100+) and it’s still going strong. They have an rss feed, check it every day so you don’t miss out on bargains.

The second one is techbargains.com. They round up all the latest deals from all the sites like best buy, circuit city, dell, gateway, amazon, etc. It’s a great way to check out the latest bargains all at once from one page. There can be like 20-50+ posts per day, so it can be a lot to view. I usually read the rss feed for like a week whenever I’m looking to get something specific.

I buy a lot of books and odds and ends from amazon, so I’m going to toot my own horn a bit here. I put together a little amazon portal on one of my other sites called The Smorgasbord Store. When I want to buy something from amazon it’s nice to use this store because when you go to amazon, sometimes the pages take forever to load from all the suggestions and listmanaia! thingies they are trying to push at you. Using The Smorgasbord Store, you just get the straight products from amazon without all the extra crapola. Check it out, it works pretty good!

Here’s one last one……I’ve always been able to get my flash cards for my digital camera much cheaper than anyone I know, and about 80% cheaper than buying them in the retail store. The last few times I bought (an SD) flash memory card I bough a 2GB card for only $9.95! And shipping was only $5. That is still about the cheapest I’ve ever seen, and it wasn’t some no-name or off brand either – these were Kingston cards. I now buy all my flash memory cards exclusively through Adorama Camera. Why are they so cheap?? They are a “grey box reseller”, which basically means that they are selling you a retail box item imported directly from China or Taiwan (imported themselves) without going through a middleman and without the expense of a retail store. If they can import these and sell them that low, and still turn a good profit, just imagine how marked up everything you buy everyday at your local store is. The same 2GB card was selling at my local store for $50-$60 last month!

If you have sites that you find amazing online deals through or use a lot – please comment now!