Lots o’ people call me cheap (my Grandma most frequently, but I’ll save the internets from her “only funny because I’m a cranky old black woman” racist slurs). I don’t think I’m that cheap, but what the hell do I know? I figure if I am cheap, then I probably know some good ways to get deals. And if I do, then, hell, some people may find my shopping habits interesting. I’ll stick to my internet shopping, since that’s really all the shopping I do anyway.

Deals o’ the Day

I think the reason some people (like Thomas) call me cheap is that I do a lot of window shopping and talk myself out of buying things I want, until I find it at the right price. To that end, I do a high amount of window shopping on the internet. Pretty much every morning, I crank up the ole RSS reader and read world, nerd and sports news and then top it off with the “deals of the day”. A lot of sites have great single-day deals and if you have a running list of things you can wait on, this can be a way to get them on the cheap. The following are where I get most of those:

  • woot.com – ah, woot. Woot is probably the most popular “deal a day” site on the net. It tends to be tech-heavy, but isn’t always (they’ve even had appliances on it). Everything ships for $5 and I’ve bought a few things from them and been happy, happy. Along with general woot.com, there is also wine.woot.com, selling, well… wine. Unfortunately, GA stinks and I can’t buy it, but I hear it’s typically good stuff. There is also my latest favorite, shirt.woot.com, selling t-shirt designs from all over (including ones from “Derbys” that let the community vote on the top three shirts based on a theme). The shirts are always $10 with free shipping and generally tend to be pretty kewl. They do sellout quickly, though, and resell later at their Day Of Reckoning site (for $15, unfortunately). Also, in the woot family is sellout.woot.com, which is more like woot.com, but run through yahoo stores and has wicked super deals, and as far as I’ve seen is always tech related.
  • buy.com deal of the day – I actually get this one in an email, with all the full day’s deals. I haven’t bought from buy.com too many times, but I’ve been pleased every time. I actually bought my Vizio 37″ LCD HDTV (1080i) from them for all of $570. And I love it.
  • Amazon.com gold box – this is Amazon’s deal of the day site. I’ve only bought one thing from it ever (Katy’s back pillow), but it worked out perfectly and it was about 50% off.

If you don’t want to go through all of those and would rather just get a huge list, I have tried Deal Sucker and it seems to do a good job, though for me, it almost does too good of a job and is overwhelming.

Coupons

Every time I checkout online, I run off to google and search for “X coupon” or “Y promotion code”. It helps to use the same language the checkout process uses for a discount code — Google will find it better if you type it the same as the site asks for it, at least in my experience. I think you’ll be surprised how many coupons you find this way – last xmas I had at least a 50% success rate doing that.

There are probably sites that will send you coupons all the time if you sign up and want to get spammed like crazy. No thanks, says me.

Gift Cards on Ebay

Once you know how much you’re going to spend and where, you can probably find a discounted gift card for that site on ebay. I just searched for “amazon gift card” and found a ton of them for sale. It’ll almost always be a digital transfer of the coupon/gift code, so there is no shipping and you’ll probably save $10 or more, pretty much instantly. My only caution there would be to buy from a trusted seller. (This is also a good way to get rid of those gift cards or merchandise credit you know you’ll never use)
Discount/Sale Search Sites

I guess I should throw a blurb in here about all the discount sites out there. I usually do a search of these sites when I’m looking to buy something. Sometimes you’ll find the same deals on all of them, but occasionally, you’ll find a wicked deal on one…

Buying Used

Amazon has great deals, but there are better deals if you are ok with used. Amazon always has a “$x.yz and up from amazon sellers” deal next to each listing. I’ve bought tons of books and movies and stuff that way and have never had a problem with any of the items.

Also, of course, there is Craig’s List. I have had little luck on CL, but I think I’m just not patient enough or quick enough, and it has a “you have to still deal with real people” thing to it, and well, people suck. Too many donks on CL think they should get 99% of the price they paid for the item, three years later. Some people (Josh and Christy) have much more success on it than me.

So, there it is, my system for buying stuff on the net. I’m definitely interested in hearing your thoughts on the issue, so leave ‘em below.