News, Tips and Resources for Online Bargain Hunters
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If you missed the last week deal on 400GB Segate here are a couple more good Hard Drive deals from Frys.
1. Maxtor 300GB PATA for $69.99
2. Segate 300GB SATA for $79.99
Both offers come with free shipping. See the relevant discussion at the FatWallet forums.
Today only you can list anything on Ebay for just 20 cents. Note, this is only the insertion fee. All other fees still apply.
Alright, will have a busy evening today. Need to get rid of a lot of old junk… :-)
Forums at FatWallet and SlickDeals are full of shopping techniques that sometimes allow you to bring the product price into the negative territory. That is right – how strange this could sound – the store ends up owing you! The most elaborate ones I have seen require use of price matching, mail-in rebates, and stacked in promotional coupons – all at the same time.
While price matching sounds like a good idea when you need that warm feeling that you don’t overpay (and to get on deals like this) – it sometimes can end up costing you a lot of time and effort. I will confess, I myself took this route not once. It often turns into a challenge: “Will I be able to pull it off?” I am sure the “boasting rights to the best price” play certain role in it as well. But let’s face it. There are so many better things to do than arguing with the store manager over the price for that DVD.
Due to overall customer dissatisfaction with mail-in rebates some retailers are bailing out of the program altogether. The whole concept of mail-in rebate is so unpopular that certain web sites have used it to their advantage by offering only no-rebate bargains while others have been monetizing on the challenges you will face should you get on the MIR hook.
If you are still not convinced here is some must read material to get you started. In any case it is up to you to decide what you want to do with your time.
A small California based start-up has recently made appearance with a sneak peek at their soon to be shopping portal full of consumer product reviews. Earlier this year this same company started offering product reviews outsourcing to big and small retailers for free. That is right, they offer service that such companies as BazaarVoice.com are charging thousands for. How is it possible? Here is their story on it. In a nutshell:
The idea sounds great and PowerReviews team is working hard to get into the market. Among other things, they are patenting a number of leading edge technologies to make use of their services by retailers as easy as possible. The real question is, as a portal will they be able to compete with the behemoths like Epinions and Amazon who currently dominate the market? The answer to this question ultimately defines if they stay afloat 2 years from now or not.
My personal opinion is that they have a very good shot at it. Unlike TheFind – one of the price comparison engines I reviewed earlier – PowerReviews doesn’t sacrifice the quality of the information they provide by taking a different approach to monetizing their idea. Their business model looks sound and they should be able to pull it off.
This is the October 2006 revision of the Popular Bargain Hunting web sites list. You can find the last month revision of the list here.
Over the past month (partially thanks to your tips) I have discovered quite a few new web sites. 8 of them have made it to the top list. There are total of 16 sites that didn’t make it.
I have dropped the Page Rank > 0 requirement. Now all the web sites with Alexa < 100,000 are included. It is hard to understand how Google calculates the rank. Sometimes very popular sites get a rank of 0 (e.g resellerrating.com). I will still keep tracking Page Rank for the reference.
The change in rating shows the difference compared to the September results. The web sites that I don’t have last month results for are marked as n/a. The top looser appears to be gotapex.com with a -21.6% decrease in Alexa rank. The top gainer is dailyedeals.com with +18.3% increase.
Update: resellerrating is incorrect domain name. It should be resellerratings (with trailing ’s’) and the Page Rank is 7. Thanks to Dealigg for the tip.
| # | Web Site | Alexa Rank | Page Rank | Online Since | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | fatwallet.com | 393 | (-18.4%) | 7 | 29-Nov-1999 | |
| 2 | slickdeals.net | 459 | (-10.3%) | 6 | 10-Nov-1999 | |
| 3 | anandtech.com | 1598 | (-6.1%) | 7 | 24-Aug-1997 | |
| 4 | techbargains.com | 2376 | (-16.4%) | 6 | 03-May-1999 | |
| 5 | smartbargains.com | 2681 | (n/a) | 6 | (n/a) | 10-Jan-2000 |
| 6 | bensbargains.net | 3091 | (-16.8%) | 6 | 21-Mar-2000 | |
| 7 | dealnews.com | 3160 | (-10.1%) | 6 | 20-Jan-1999 | |
| 8 | dealsea.com | 5762 | (-18.8%) | 4 | 27-Jun-2001 | |
| 9 | edealinfo.com | 6568 | (-6.6%) | 5 | 12-Dec-2000 | |
| 10 | dealcatcher.com | 6603 | (-10.9%) | 6 | 28-Jul-1999 | |
| 11 | deals2buy.com | 7691 | (n/a) | 2 | (n/a) | 15-Nov-2002 |
| 12 | judysbook.com | 7888 | (-0.8%) | 6 | 11-Aug-2003 | |
| 13 | resellerratings.com | 8740 | (n/a) | 7 | (n/a) | 18-Jun-1998 |
| 14 | flamingoworld.com | 10111 | (-14.9%) | 5 | 19-May-1999 | |
| 15 | dealspl.us | 10287 | (+13.7%) | 3 | 15-May-2006 | |
| 16 | xpbargains.com | 11873 | (-8.9%) | 5 | 29-Nov-2001 | |
| 17 | spoofee.com | 13951 | (-13.5%) | 4 | 31-Dec-2000 | |
| 18 | dealtaker.com | 14428 | (-0.5%) | 4 | 08-Feb-2004 | |
| 19 | gotapex.com | 18138 | (-21.6%) | 6 | 29-Apr-1999 | |
| 20 | dealofday.com | 19847 | (-15.7%) | 7 | 30-Aug-1999 | |
| 21 | dealsofamerica.com | 22270 | (-14.6%) | 3 | 06-Sep-2003 | |
| 22 | fishingfordeals.com | 22625 | (-9.7%) | 4 | 23-May-2000 | |
| 23 | cheapstingybargains.com | 28079 | (-13.6%) | 3 | 20-Jan-2005 | |
| 24 | dealslist.com | 29011 | (+1.9%) | 3 | 18-Jul-2000 | |
| 25 | gottadeal.com | 29689 | (+15.4%) | 5 | 27-Jan-2003 | |
| 26 | bargainshare.com | 29899 | (n/a) | 4 | (n/a) | 29-Nov-2002 |
| 27 | hotdealsclub.com | 31257 | (-14.6%) | 3 | 27-Dec-2000 | |
| 28 | bradsdeals.com | 31592 | (-8.3%) | 4 | 29-Jun-2005 | |
| 29 | hot-deals.org | 32728 | (n/a) | 4 | (n/a) | 10-May-2000 |
| 30 | ableshoppers.com | 35221 | (-4.6%) | 5 | 10-Aug-2000 | |
| 31 | dealplumber.com | 41534 | (+15.9%) | 4 | 17-Jul-2006 | |
| 32 | dailyedeals.com | 47426 | (+18.3%) | 5 | 18-Feb-2000 | |
| 33 | dealhunting.com | 50718 | (n/a) | 5 | (n/a) | 29-May-2000 |
| 34 | passwird.com | 50772 | (-13.1%) | 5 | 28-Aug-2001 | |
| 35 | dealmine.com | 55080 | (n/a) | 2 | (n/a) | 19-Apr-2005 |
| 36 | bargaineering.com | 59223 | (+3.1%) | 4 | 01-Dec-2004 | |
| 37 | mightygoods.com | 60009 | (+8.5%) | 7 | 21-Aug-2004 | |
| 38 | dealhack.com | 67333 | (+2.7%) | 3 | 06-Feb-2005 | |
| 39 | dealspy.org | 73265 | (+2.7%) | 3 | 03-Mar-2006 | |
| 40 | dealdetectives.com | 76901 | (-1.8%) | 4 | 03-Oct-2004 | |
| 41 | morestuff4less.com | 82311 | (-11.2%) | 5 | 05-Nov-2002 | |
| 42 | daddyodeals.com | 92403 | (n/a) | 0 | (n/a) | 05-Nov-2002 |
| 43 | headlinedeals.com | 95955 | (n/a) | 3 | (n/a) | 24-Jun-2002 |
