Altralto

Hope this top 10 list helps you black Friday shoppers out there.  I haven’t included boxing gloves or Tasers.  Please be nice shoppers!

1. Write it all down. Make a list for Black Friday and keep columns for offers, shop names, coupons, and preferences. Be sure to jot down more than one option.

2. Wear comfortable shoes and clothes that breathe. Organize your wallet in convenient ways. Keep a credit or debit card completely free of debt so that payment is easy.

3. The week before Black Friday start your search for the best deals. Tag as favorite online Black Friday sites which give the latest updates, online sales page and coupons.

4. Collect all offers that come in the Thanksgiving newspaper and clip according to your priority. Look for advertisements that give extras for buying multiple objects or for shopping during lean times.

5. Surf online and find sites that allow online purchase and waive shipping or allow you to pick up your purchases at a local store.

6. Use online comparison tools to find most affordable tools.

7. Look for Night Owl discounts and Early Bird Offers. Often you will be the winner if you know what you are keen on buying well in advance.

8. Take advertisements with you while you shop so that you can buy at prices promised. However internet prices are not valid at stores.

9. Be sure you are getting what you pay for and not what looks like an attractive price for a printer and what you get is a printer with no ink or other essential parts.

10. Make the best of Black Friday shopping by using credit card offers on additional cash back offers, or extended warranties. Many cards offer warranty coverage, return protection, or sales price protection to buyers who use the card. Make the most of it.

Make up your mind not to lose your cool on Black Friday. While crowds, pushing and pulling are all part of the fun consider doing the shopping at smaller stores where the range may be smaller but you are more likely to be a winner. Black Friday shopping needs a solid strategy, a full stomach, and determination to succeed.

Black Friday shopping is not an official U.S. holiday yet it is a day much anticipated by shoppers all across the U.S. and its neighbouring countries. It is a festive day as it heralds the start of the Christmas shopping season.

Merchants and retailers during this day slash down their prices giving the best deals and bargains for the holiday rush. Some stores open at the stroke of midnight on a Friday then closes on midnight the following day making the Black Friday shopping experience a 24-hour hectic activity of ‘rush and grab.’  Shoppers compete to get the best deals yet merchants too compete to offer the best prices.

Like the Canadian Boxing Day where everybody is frantic to get in line with a bunch of impatient people, to buy something they otherwise won’t need 48 hours later.  You guys call it Black Friday.  How appropriate.  I’d also like

Black Friday is basically a day for shopping at great discounts.  Time to make some room for Christmas inventory.  I think the tradition has much changed in that now the Christmas deals commence.  I think Halloween is the time of year where this summer stock is liquidated (I’m sure you’ve noticed that many walmarts have the Halloween decorations up in August)

A misunderstood tradition for many years, Black Friday is a day people prepare for with enthusiasm and nearly 140 plus million shop and buy electronics, clothes, kitchenware, personal accessories and more.  Wouldn’t it be fair to say that much of your big ticket Christmas shopping begins around the Thanksgiving weekend?

Black Friday kicks off the holiday season and retailers attract shoppers online and offline with tempting deals. Its not just big discounts, there is the accompanying fanfare, advertisements, enticements, and joy. People prepare to make the most of Black Friday by looking for offers, cutting coupons, making shopping groups, and lists. Stores open for sales at mid night on Thursday and online stores attract shoppers by offering a jump on sales by opening earlier and offering store pick ups, coupons and more.

The Origins of Black Friday Shopping

However, the term used to describe this hectic day also came with many speculations.  It was said that even before the popularity of Black Friday shopping spread like wildfire in 2000, it was called Black Friday simply because of the massive traffic and over-crowded sidewalks.  In 1966, stores in the East Coast are mobbed from opening to closing and the media reported the event.  And perhaps, it was also the media who coined Black Friday yet it only received wider exposure in 1975 and it even became more popular in 2000.

Since Black Friday shopping caters to workers who are taking their day off as part of the Thanksgiving holiday, the numbers of potential buyers are increased thus making the day a Black Friday shopping rush.  Sales volume are increased and over the years, from 1993 to 2001, the day was marked as the fifth to tenth busiest day of the year, it ranked as the second busiest day in 2002 and 2004 while ranking first in 2003 and 2005.

Media even reports that in 2007 alone, Black Friday shopping recorded a 135 million shoppers that flocked various merchants like Sears, Macy’s Best Buy, Toys ‘R; Us and Wal-Mart while popular toys and electronics shops heavily visited by bargain hunters.

Despite the kind of headache only a traffic jam could give, another speculation on how Black Friday came to be began to circulate in the 1980′s.  Since most merchants suffer and endure financial loss for almost ten months, it is only from Black Friday shopping until Christmas that merchants made their profit. However, when merchants loss money instead of gaining profit, the loss is recorded in red ink while profit is in black, thus the Black Friday came about.  On one hand, stressed out employees during this day also gave their own version on why Black Friday shopping. Accordingly, the day is the longest for any employee as well as it is the most hectic and tiring day.

While digging on the Kiplinger website, I came across this article (way back from November 2007)

If you really want to score a great buy, use a price-comparison site. Dealio.com, which compares prices on 30 million products from 100,000 merchants, has a larger retail search than rival sites offer and provides coupon codes with a thumbs up/thumbs down review to show how many users have had success using the coupon. What we really like about this site, though, are the downloadable tools that help you find the lowest prices online.

Pronto.com fetches prices on 70 million products from more than 25,000 online merchants, including eBay. PriceGrabber.com offers prices on products from nearly 13,000 merchants. Both sites let you sign up to receive e-mail alerts when your favorite brands or products go on sale. And both have blogs with product reviews, deal news, gift ideas and trends in clothing and home decor.

If you know exactly what you want and need just a bare-bones price comparison site, try Google’s shopping search engine, Google Product Search (formerly Froogle). What you’ll get are lots of results for your search, product reviews, seller ratings and a “local shopping” option to help you find products at stores near you. What you won’t see is a home page full of hot products, shopping guides, product categories and colorful images you’ll find on sites such as PriceGrabber.

Shop with cyber-coupons
Put away the scissors — you don’t have to clip these coupons. Plenty of sites offer coupon codes (and printable coupons) for online and brick-and-mortar retailers. The nice thing about our picks is that you don’t have to register on these sites to gain access to the coupons.

RetailMeNot offers coupons from more than 40,000 stores and a community where you can get tips and deal info from others. You also can have the week’s most-popular coupons e-mailed to you.

CouponWinner.com has nearly 20,000 coupons from about 9,000 retailers. What we like about the site is its Coupon Scout tool that lets you compare coupons from up to five retailers. Click on a category, such as women’s apparel, and the Coupon Scout tool will appear on the left-hand side of the page.

Coupon Sherpa is new to the online-coupon scene (launched in September 2009). The staff test promotions and work with merchants to ensure that the coupons actually work. The site also includes a page of holiday shipping deadlines for Christmas delivery. Coupon Sherpa also is available as an iPhone application (see Coupons Made Easy).

Not only does Alex’s Coupons offer coupon codes for more than 1,200 stores, but also it helps in the fight against childhood cancer. Over the past four year’s, Alex’s Coupons has donated more than $20,000 to childhood cancer charities.

And if you’re shopping for children, check out CleverBabies.com. It has coupons for stores such as Toys R Us, DisneyShopping.com and babyGap. The site also posts sales, has forums and has its own coupons.
Hot deals!

If you’re not exactly sure what to get that certain person on your gift list, check out online deal sites, which post loads of discounted items. You’re bound to find the right gift at the right price.
Our favorite still is dealnews, which has a team of deal hunters keeping their eyes on a million products at more than 2,000 online retailers. Plus merchants and the site’s visitors tip them off to bargains. The deal hunters hand pick the best deals among the thousands they get daily and update the site at least 200 times a day, says Dan de Grandpre, founder and chief executive of dealnews.

The site also bans stores with poor customer service. Plus, you can sign up for e-mail or RSS alerts for products or stores you’re interested in and get gift ideas from the site. And it has a Black Friday section with a list of stores that offer price matching.

Dealtaker.com lists some deals on its home page, but you’ll find hundreds more listed in its forums. So if you’re willing to take the time to troll through the forums, you’ll probably find deals here you won’t find other places. Or use the search option if there’s a particular product for which you’re trying to find a deal.

There are more than 200,000 forum members who post deals, and you don’t have to register to view the ones listed. The site also offers coupons for more than 2,000 online stores, a price search engine and e-mail notification of deals. If you like the community atmosphere, you also can find lots of deals posted in the forums on MyBargainBuddy.com.

For electronics and tech gadgets, we like DealsOfAmerica, which updates deals every hour. Every item it lists on the home page has a picture, a description, the store that’s offering the deal and, best of all, the list price so you’ll know just how much of a bargain you’re getting. The site also has coupons, a price-comparison tool, a list of products or services available for free after rebate or coupon and a hot deal e-mail alert you can sign up to receive. Deals are from top online retailers and brick-and-mortar stores with nationwide presence.

Gift-card deals
Never pay full price for a gift card again. GiftCards.com and Gift Card Granny (launched November 2009) sell merchants’ gift cards for less than face value. They’ll also buy gift cards you don’t want (for 80% to 90% of the card’s value).

Buying a discounted gift card to use for your own Christmas shopping is a good way to score additional discounts. For example, buy a $100 Gap gift card for $90 (instant $10 savings), use it to shop online and use a coupon code for additional savings.

Free-shipping deals
High shipping costs can be a big drawback to shopping online. FreeShipping.org offers free-shipping coupons for more than 1,800 stores, including Amazon.com, Target and eBay. And all you last-minute shoppers don’t want to miss Free Shipping Day December 17. Luke Knowles, who created Free Shipping Day in 2008, says he expects at least 500 merchants to participate this year and guarantee Christmas-Eve delivery for all items purchased on Free Shipping Day.

Get cash back
Another way to spend less is to earn cash while you shop. That’s the premise of FatWallet, Ebates.com and Bing cashback. Join their cash-back programs and you can get cash back (usually a percentage of your purchase) when you buy items from select merchants.

Be sure to read the fine print. You don’t get cash back at the time of your purchase. Instead, it accrues in an account and is sent to you periodically. Also, not all merchants featured on these sites participate and of those that do, some have their own requirements for earning cash back.

Black Friday Shopping Nightmare

There are several sites devoted to posting Black Friday ads weeks before they run in newspapers. Created in 2003, Black Friday (bfads.net) was the first site exclusively dedicated to posting Black Friday ads. What we like about this site is that it has photos of sale items and icons that denote whether they are early bird or rebate items and the time the sale begins. Black Friday also has online deals, buying guides and a mailing list you can sign up for to receive e-mail notifications of deals.

If you don’t want to rack up credit-card debt shopping this holiday season, there is a safe way pay with cash online — and get deals. Check out eBillme’s Black Friday deals and sales for online shopping.

Parting tips
On a final note, if you’re shopping online be sure to look for privacy and security seals on retailers’ sites, know the return and exchange policies, and check shipping deadlines to ensure your gifts arrive on time. (See 5 Tips for Safe Online Shopping for more advice.)
And to make sure you’re getting the best bargain online, look for the item at the best price from a merchant with free shipping and a coupon to lower the cost even further — the trifecta of bargain shopping.

Happy shopping!

Read the entire article at http://www.kiplinger.com/features/archives/2007/11/hotdeals.html

The day after Thanksgiving, which is also known as Black Friday, is the opportunity to start or complete your holiday shopping. Black Friday is famous for great bargains and deals that are only available for the entire day or for a few hours. Before you even start shopping, you should really have a plan, so you can make sure that you get everything that you want. Just follow these Black Friday shopping tips below.

Research the Ads
The best way of finding the latest Black Friday Deals is by picking up a newspaper on Thanksgiving and looking through the ads. You will notice a huge stack of circulars in the middle of the newspaper. Then, you should grab a marker and circle items in the ads that you want. Afterwards, you want to gather any circulars that you circle items in and organize them into a pile. Take a look at those circulars again and find out if certain items are on sale at certain time. You can start planning your Black Friday shopping from there.

Take Advantage of Early Door Buster Specials
Black Friday offers early door buster specials that are available through certain times. For these sales, you want to make sure you get there early. If you are trying to get high priced or rare items, you want to arrive even earlier before the crowd.

Avoid the crowds by shopping online.

You can still get great Black Friday deals without leaving your home and complete all of your Black Friday shopping online. Most stores offer the same deals at their locations as they do online. Sometimes, online stores offer better or exclusive deals than their other locations. No more waiting in long lines or outside in the cold weather.