How to do Black Friday Shopping from Home

I remember when my parents first bought something online for Christmas. It was 1998, we had just gotten a family computer (a good one) and a reasonable Internet connection. They ordered from from Dick’s Sporting Goods, but first tried an unfortunate URL that brought that to a site they were definitely not expecting. Being the resident computer nerd, I helped remove the site from both the screen and their history, and got them to the right site. Since then they’ve done a whole lot of computer shopping around Christmas, and in recent years have done their shopping almost exclusively through Amazon and other sites. Why am I telling you this? Because you don’t need to go out on Black Friday to get Black Friday deals.

There are tons of websites out there that are  dedicated to aggregating Black Friday deals, as well as deals in general. As a matter of fact, Amazon started doing deals a week early. On top of that, deals get better closer to Christmas. So how can you make sure you get the best deals? Twitter is a great place to start.

Aside from Amazon’s official account (@amazon), there is Kinja Deals (@KinjaDeals), which is dedicated to finding the best deals on the Internet, and they deliver 365 days a year from tons of different sites. I have also complied my own list of Twitter accounts here. It includes Groupon, woot!, and a lot more too.You can follow any of the links to the corresponding sites from that list to find great deals too. Pay especially close attention to Amazon’s Gold Box deals, which change several times a day and gets you around 50-60% off, sometimes more.

If you’re looking specifically for Black Friday deals, there is @blackfriday_fm. They not only tweet out the best online deals, but scans of in-store Black Friday circulars. What I recommend doing is checking those deals against what Amazon, Kinja Deals, and other online retailers are doing to see if you can find something comparable (or even better).

Make sure to pay attention to the social media accounts of all of your favorite stores. At this point, everyone knows people do a ton of shopping online, and they will want to get in on it. Last year, over $1 Billion was spent online over Black Friday weekend and I’m willing to bet that will go up this year. Instead of waking up at the crack of dawn to camp out in the cold, stay comfortable, on your couch and shop. I’m willing to bet the deals will be better too.

Oh, and if you’re worried about shipping, give Amazon Prime a try. They give you a free trial that will take you right through Christmas.