I see funny people on Ben’s Bargain: Where ghetto dogs come for the lowdown on deals
Besides Slashdot and Digg, part of a geek’s daily intake of news is likely to include a bunch of deal shopping sites. While there are plenty of “deal aggregators” out there to fill our every need, which should we really use?
Here’s my categorized remix of Pete Freitag’s (of Dealazon) neat list of deal shopping sites, complete with additional commentary:
Straightforward ones:
- TechBargains – I grew up with this so to me, it’s sorta like the grand daddy of electronic bargains. It’s a constantly updated blog managed by a few human editors. Low interactivity with no commenting and title-only RSS feed. Great for deal-seeking newbies.
- Deal News – Pretty nice site in the same vein as Techbargains. Also features several sub sites: dealmac, dealram, dealcam, etc. Dealmac’s great for Mac owners while Dealram’s my personal starting point for buying computer memory. Dealnews’ RSS feeds offer abstracts of the full article, which isn’t too shabby.
- Ben’s Bargains – Similar to Techbargain also, but besides listing electronic deals, they also list other things such as tools, clothes, and kitchen utensils. RSS feed is title-only, but with item name, price and location. This deal blog that allows comments (like the one shown above!)
- SlickDeals – Again like techbargains, but with other kinds of misc stuff.
- Overstock – they have a lot of good stuff, and good prices.
- Delight Deals – For the ladies, so I don’t know much about it!
- DealMouse – A nice deal blog – mostly electronics.
- DealCatcher – blog with lots of different stuff, majority is probably electronics.
- deallog – A minimal deal blog from the 9rules network.
Marketplace ones:
- Fat Wallet: Hot Deals Forum – Fat Wallet actually offers a bunch of shopping services, including a deal forums, news, and price comparison. I’m directing you to the Hot Deal forum since that’s where all the real action is. Raw deals get posted here by people like yourself, before getting syndicated elsewhere. While you’ll have to spend a fair bit of time rummaging through the discussion board, you’ll find the most frequently updated (and often best) deals here before anyone else (Out of Stock anyone?). Besides finding online deals, this forum excels in finding B&M (Brick & Motar = real physical store) deals in your neighborhood. Nothing beats having the eyes and ears of actual people on the ground (embedded reporters?) giving status updates on sale items. It can be time-consuming to read and a title-only RSS feed might won’t help much. The forum feed is impossible to read straight-through since hundreds of posts are made daily, so use the feed only if your RSS reader allows you to put search filters for particular items.
- AnandTech Forums – Hot deals forum almost similar to Fatwallet’s Hot Deals forum, but focused squarely on computer stuff. Mostly for system builders.
- Bidding for Travel – If you’re travelling, you should know that Priceline.com gets you the cheapest accomodations around, if you know what you’re doing. The BiddingForTravel forum shows you how low others have bid for and won, so you can try for the same wherever you travel next time.
Special ones:
- Dealazon – Fully automated deal aggregator that watches Amazon. Searches Amazon’s API and stores the best deals. You can do pretty nifty stuff through creatively customized RSS feeds. Watching price drops on your favorite item has never been so fun! Limited to Amazon, but this really milks it for you.
- Clipfire – Think of this as the Digg for deals… Clipfire searches websites and products submitted by users as “clips”. The best deal appear as the most clipped products, which in turn show up higher in search results.
- digg.com/deals – Digg the social news site does a decent job of finding good deals, though the community’s more oriented toward tech/web news.
- Woot – Features one deal every day. Very simple, which is what makes it so popular. Hilarious deal posts by Woot’s editors make it worth reading, even if you don’t buy anything.
- Mighty Goods – A beautiful catalogue-like blog. Not everything is on sale but fun to read since it’s all about nifty stuff.
- AntiRebate – Like deals, but hate rebates? Then this blog is for you.
- absurdlycool – What’s better thana good deal? A free deal of course! Freebie Finder is an automated free stuff aggregator. It’s designed to collect free stuff offers from top freebie sites, while filtering out most scams and referral pyramids. Do grab their RSS feed.
- Etsy – More like a designer’s eBay than a deal site, here’s a place to buy and sell all kinds of homemade goods. I mentioned it because it potentially offers great deals on great looking stuff you never knew you needed. Do check out their very Web 2.0-ish product selection interface, where you can even shop by color! Lots of bigwigs funding this company… its really designed to give a great shopping experience.
Are there any other deals sites you digg which Pete Freitag and I should know about?
UPDATE: The Blog Joint lists out standard shopping sites based on what you are looking for.
