Crowd source your purchasing

I previously wrote about how I crowd source my purchasing by using online deal seeking communities such as Slick Deals and FatWallet.

Today, I’m going to write about a specific example and share a few tips.

Use the Deal Alerts

Surfing and sifting through all of the deals posted on SlickDeals and FatWallet can be daunting and tedious. It takes time, but there are some tools to help.

One of the best tools available on SlickDeals is the Deal Alerts feature. Deal Alerts allows you to setup instant email notifications for when a new deal is posted that matches a specific keyword set that you specify.

Instant deal notifications are extremely useful. Many of the best deals posted on these sites are limited time or limited quantity. If you don’t pull the trigger on your purchase quickly, you might miss out on a super hot deal.

Deal Alerts + Amazon One Click purchase = awesome laptop buy

During the late November – early December time period last year, I had been closely monitoring SlickDeals and had noticed a few awesome deals on an Acer ultra low voltage notebook computer. Ultra low voltage laptops are light-weight, with long battery life and much better hardware than a netbook. These laptops are perfect for conferences or other events where a mobile computer are needed. Unfortunately, I was missing out on all the deals, sometimes very narrowly.

To help myself score the deal I wanted, I setup instant email notifications using the model name of the laptop I was looking to purchase as my keyword. I then setup one click purchasing on Amazon mobile from my phone.

Lo and behold, I was sitting in a movie theater, watching a film, when I received an instant deal notification on the laptop model that I had been looking for a deal on. I quickly looked at the deal, confirming its hotness, clicked through to Amazon and purchased the laptop with one click.

By the time I got out of the movie, Amazon was sold out.

Thanks to the instant Deal notifications and one click purchasing on Amazon, I scored an awesome ultra low voltage laptop for around ~$330. Win!

One Comment on “Crowd source your purchasing”

  1. Thanks Wes – this is interesting – good to hear about the things that actually work because there are so many out there that are “shady” – thanks for sharing!

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