2007 May archive at ProBargainHunter.com

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Archive for May, 2007

Dick’s Sporting Goods $10 off $25 coupon

Published May 22nd, 2007 in Shopping Coupons. 0 Comments

Update: the coupon is no longer available online. Click here for the list of latest deals from this merchant

Just got a tip on a new coupon from Dick’s Sporting Goods. ScoreRewards members can get $10 off their purchase of $25 or more when they bring this coupon (click on the image below) to the local Dick’s Sporting Goods. If you are not a member of this rewards program, registration is free and can be done on the spot at any Dick’s store.

Dick’s Sporting Goods operates more than 300 stores in about 35 states (see if yours is listed). They bought rival Galyan’s in 2004 and Golf Galaxy in 2007. The coupon good in store only. Offer expires June 9, 2007.

Dick's Sporting Goods promotion

My bargain hunting philosophy, things that matter

Published May 21st, 2007 in Money Saving Tips. 10 Comments

When I started this blog. I decided that I will write about things related to online shopping and in particular will talk about how to save money while shopping.

While shopping related events and news come and go, there are certain fundamental ideas that never get old. This blog post pretty much summarizes the principles that I try to follow in my quest to smart shopping.

Don’t buy what you don’t need

The temptation might be high but the most important principle of my bargain hunting philosophy is not to buy stuff I won’t use. There might be exceptions, and that is if you are sure it will make a good gift for someone you know, or if you are confident you can sell it for profit on eBay. The general rule however is that before you buy that flash drive for $5 after rebate, answer to yourself, why do you need 3-4-5 of these flash drives?

Buy used if it makes sense

Buying things used actually satisfies two sides of me, one I save money, two I give the thing second life. This is especially true of books and toys for kids which I never buy new. Half.com is where I usually end up buying books and garage sales is the main source of toys for my kids. I have previously discussed this subject and you might want to take a look at my list of things you should never buy new.

Don’t be afraid to buy in bulk

This of course doesn’t apply to everything however there is a certain class of things you can buy in bulk and save. Paying $$$ up front might look scary to some but don’t let your feelings confuse you — use the math. Here are some things I always buy in numbers:

napkins, toilet paper, paper towels
toothpaste, toothbrushes
canned food
batteries

Go DIY whenever it works

Doing things yourself might not always be the best option (check out the oil change discussion in the comments to this post) but there are many cases when it can save you money and you might learn something useful in the process. In addition there might be some other side benefits you didn’t expect.

For example I resist to the temptation to hire someone to mow my yard grass. I feel I need that bit of workout (applies to snow shoveling too). Also, I found I can save a lot by replacing the printer toner instead of entire cartridge, somewhat around $100 savings per fill up.

Consider hidden costs

Use your brains and view your new gadget or utility from all perspectives. If you buy a printer look at the per print costs. If you buy a car, consider insurance, maintenance, repair, and gas costs. These can be huge factors affecting the cost of ownership/use. This is exactly why I replaced my ink jet printer with a laser one long time ago, and why I switched to CFL lights as soon as I moved into our home.

Don’t run after the latest and greatest

I am sure many of you enjoy owning that latest gadget. This however may be very costly and if you wait a few months, the price may well go down by 50% or more. This is the nature of marketing. People want new stuff and merchants play on their feelings by jacking up prices. Resist the urge and wait it out. Buy two gadgets for the price of one later, give one to your younger sister/brother as a gift, and enjoy the feeling of giving!

Search and compare

I never buy a more or less expensive thing without first visiting a few other stores to compare alternatives. For online shopping, use this list of price comparison sites as a reference. For off line, call FruCall, or just visit a few competitors. Don’t go overboard though and weigh what is more important to you, the opportunity to save, or the chance of wasting time and effort.

Don’t forget to haggle

Remember that prices on big-ticket items are almost always negotiable. While there are some things we all know about (car, house, furniture) there are other things that are less obvious (bed mattress, household electronics). Here are a few haggling tricks to get you started. Negotiate your new car price via email if haggling face to face is not your thing.

Use credit cards with cash back

Credit cards with a cash back option are the easiest way to save while shopping. They require minimum effort and savings can be up to 5% on top of any other discount you find. Credit cards have been one of my favorite money savings tools. Read this blog post for an overview of how I use them.

The only challenge with credit cards is to remember that all your savings will evaporate if you don’t pay your balance in full. Once you get that part right — just rip the benefits. For optimal credit card rewards, make sure your cards are tuned up.

Visit deal sites

Once in a while I entertain myself or my close ones to a gift. Gifts are twice more entertaining if I don’t have to pay for them my arm and leg. Free gifts are especially enjoying. Deal sites is what I use for my gifts. I usually give them a visit once every other day and see if anything really hot pops up. In addition to deal sites from my monthly list I can recommend deal aggregators (reviewed here and here).

Read my blog

This list will not be complete without a shameless plug like this. I have been noticing lately that I use my blog as a reference to all things I know about online shopping and bargain hunting (well, this is one of the reasons why I started it). To organize things a little bit, I have collected the most valuable pieces in the Links section for easy reference. For other things I just use blog search.

What is your shopping philosophy? Do you have some bargain hunting tips you would like to share?

Stylish notebook bag for $6.99 after rebate

Published May 21st, 2007 in Shopping Bargains. 1 Comment

This is one stylish looking notebook bag that Circuit City currently sells for $6.99 after $10 mail in rebate. I think I am going to get one myself. The customer reviews on Circuit City web site are pretty favorable.

Available for purchase in store only. I checked availability and it is in stock in all three Circuit City stores in my area.

Click on the image to see the product details. The mail in rebate expires June 30, 2007 but I expect it be out of stock much sooner.

Negative $5 overnight shipping at Endless.com

Published May 21st, 2007 in Business: Strategy and Shopping Promotion. 5 Comments

Endless.com is a cool Web2.0-ish looking online store that sells exclusively shoes and handbags. They launched in December of 2006 and ever since have offered negative $5 overnight shipping to lure customers. This in essence means that your shoes ship free and on top of it you get a $5 credit, or a discount, since your shoes will likely cost more than that.

Overall prices are very reasonable as well. I compared a few products to Zappos and while Endless offers less of a variety, the prices seem to be a bit lower.

Top-notch visual shopping experience

If you have never been to the store I suggest you pay it a visit. The shopping experience it offers is one of the best I have ever had. The visual product search somewhat resembles Like.com but since Endless.com is designed specifically for shoes it offers many more shopping options. You can narrow down your selection by category, brand, color, shoe size, price range and even by how wide your foot is.

But the most impressive feature is the ability to see the shoe texture by hovering mouse over the product image. I have seen a similar functionality before however I am really amazed by the crispiness and resolution of the images that Endless.com displays.

Free product return with paid shipping

I never have bought shoes online before. When I go to a shoe store, I usually have to try a dozen pairs or so before I find the one that comfortably sits on my feet. It is possible that I am too picky, or maybe my feet have irregular shape. Either way I am not confident at all about buying shoes online. I bet the team at Endless.com is familiar with the problem. As a counter measure they offer free product return for 365 days and they will even pay for your return shipping! Isn’t it nice?

Endless Shoes

Secret affiliation with Amazon?

There is one more thing about this shoe store that is not very obvious and that is the fact that it is owned by Amazon and sells Amazon products. Even your Amazon customer login will work when you go to the login page. I am not sure why Amazon is not making the affiliation more transparent however I can guess. Since they envision themselves as a web services company and already offer a pretty impressive set of API’s for e-tailers to integrate into their online stores, Endless.com could be an example of what the next Amazon API is capable of delivering. If my assumption is correct, Amazon would want web-developers to see Endless.com as an independent Amazon partner rather than a team inside Amazon corporate campus. My exposure however to Amazon web-services is limited and anyone with a better hands on experience with it is welcome to comment.

Interview with Neal Rapoport of DealTaker

Published May 17th, 2007 in Business: Strategy. 26 Comments

DealTaker, CouponTaker, PriceTaker

Neal Rapoport, the president of DealTaker.com, is today’s guest at ProBargainHunter. I asked Neal to talk about his beginnings, and about his site, enjoy!

Hi, I am Neal Rapoport, founder of DealTaker.com. It is a pleasure to be posting this guest blog on ProBargainHunter. While usually I’m very quiet about how DealTaker.com is run, here’s a sneak-peek at how we got to where we are, and some of the more fun aspects of running a deals site. We’re proud to be a top 10 deals website on ProBargainHunter, but we do see an upcoming slide as we’re separating out some of our features into different domains this month. The changes, and much more about DealTaker.com, are addressed in the following Q&A session

What is your educational and business background? What did you do before DealTaker.com?

My background is unique to most other deals sites. In college my major was Communications, and my goal was to be a game show host. After graduation, I found that those jobs are few & far between, and that there was money in computers, so I went to work for Microsoft for a few years, and learned all I could. Then after a few other jobs, I broke out to doing consulting on my own in a particular niche market. The money was great, but I always liked getting a bargain, and so I started DealTaker.com as just a hobby.

Dealtaker.com grew from #18 in November ‘06 to #9 in April ‘07 in ProBargainHunter ranking. What is your formula of success?

We just keep doing what works. Our goals remain steady in getting the users the best deals. Thanks to our great users, they are quite loyal, and are always happy to refer their friends. Our rank will likely go down the next few months as we separate out some of our sites into separate domains. The best formula we’ve found, is just to make the site easy to use, the content fresh, and the users happy. Nothing magical, just a lot of hard work

What are some of the biggest challenges about maintaining the site as it grows?

Well, we started with a single old gateway server in my closet running on a cable modem, and quickly outgrew that to be hosted on a shared server for a few months, then moved to our own servers.. Our biggest technical challenges are constantly adding more servers, and keeping the hackers/spammers out.

You just launched PriceTaker.com, the price comparison engine. Do you have any other planned innovations that we should know about?

While we have a policy against pre-announcing new features, I can say that we’re going to have some revolutionary new additions to our sites that will make bargain hunting, and being able to participate in our community even easier. By the end of the Summer we hope to have rolled out 3 of the planned items. Unfortunately thats about all I can say on the future development right now

At times it can be daunting with the amount of deals/sales, etc. coming down the pipe. How do you manage? Is the process manual or automated?

We have a fairly manual process for adding the deals based on a forum model. Trying to automate what’s going to be a hot deal versus one thats not hot would be pretty difficult. As to the process, we allow users to post content, and we also have a team of Moderators who help post content, and keep the forum clean by adding images/links where warranted, and parsing through to make sure that the deals are all objective. We have a strict policy against self-promotion, because that could ruin a forum.

What’s the best deal you ever got personally? Do you think you buy more stuff because you know about so many deals?

I’ve gotten so many, but my favorites are a $200 27” LCD TV (dec ’05), a Kitchenaid Artisan Mixer for $124, and loads of toys & games for practically free for my kids. Every day there’s always some great deals, or fantastic coupon that I want to take advantage of, but I’ve been spending so much time running the company, that by the time I go to our forums to buy some of the things, they’re already sold out.

Do you ever check out the other deal sites? Do you keep in touch with other deal site owners? What do you discuss?

I used to spend more time looking at the other deal sites, but I don’t too often anymore. The only time I realy end up there is if I search the internet for something and end up there in the results, or if I’m alerted to an issue by our moderators. I still talk to a few of my competitors site owners, but less and less as time goes on. As to what we discuss, sometimes its other competitors practices that we don’t agree with, or particular deals, or even giving each other tips & advice.

Financial Times reports that online sales are up 29% this year. What do you think the future holds for brick and mortar electronics stores?

I’m not the expert, but I think as the internet shopping gains more credibility that the physical electronic stores may have some difficulty. I think some stores like grocery, clothes/shoes & automotive will have a more difficult time moving to online, but other industries could see stores continue to disappear quickly as online sales grow.

If you were to give just one money saving advice to ProBargainHunter readers, what would it be?

Check DealTaker.com before you shop anywhere. But if you don’t print that, I’d say the best advice is if you see a real deal to order quickly. The best deals sell out fast. Growing up, my motto was “Buy it, you’ll like it.”; I guess that hasn’t changed too much.

Thanks for allowing me the time to write to the ProBargainHunter readers. Hopefully this provided a little insight into our features, and how we got to where we are today, and why our members stay loyal.

ProBargainHunter.com

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