How to Get Black Friday Deals BEFORE Black Friday: PART 1!

You guys have asked for it, so here it is!!  A lot of you couldn’t come to the Pinner’s Conference to hear this talk or other places I have been asked to speak.  So I am going to share a few of my tips here with you guys in this post.  I usually spend an entire hour going over all of the information.. and unfortunately, I don’t think I have the time or brainpower to type all of that out in a post for you guys.  And you probably wouldn’t read all of it anyway, right?? LOL

So I am going to start with PART 1 of “How to Get Black Friday Deals BEFORE Black Friday”  and hopefully have time to get up the next few editions with more tips in the next week or so! So let’s get started:

Why Should We Shop Early?

1. It will save you a TON of money.
2. If you can get your shopping done early, your Holiday Season will be less stressful.  You will actually be able to enjoy the Holidays!
3. If you are done shopping, you can also spend time focusing on the true meaning of Christmas with your family.  And the hustle and bustle of the season sometimes pushes that aspect out of it all.

Steps to Set Your Christmas Budget:

1- Have your kids put together their Christmas Lists NOW.  The longer you wait, the harder your job will be. Have it be a running Christmas list that they can add items to if they want.  You can even give them a cutoff date so the list doesn’t become never-ending.  Tell them that Santa needs time to find all of their toys so they can’t keep adding new toys to their list.  This should help your sanity too! (If you already know what your kids want for Christmas, they might not need to make a physical list.  But write down your ideas instead for each child.)

2- Write down all of the people you need to purchase Christmas for and what items you are thinking of getting. Include how much you think you might spend on teacher gifts, neighbor gifts and anything else like that.

3- Do a little online research over on Amazon right now and see what price each of those items normally cost. You can then write those prices next to each item/person on your list.

4- Total up all of the prices you have listed to get an idea of what your grand total for Christmas might be.  If that number is too high, go back to your list and replace more expensive items with less expensive options. Then Re-Total.

Now you should have an amount to budget for Christmas.  Your job now is to not pay full price for any of those items.  A deal will come for every item.. it always does.

My goal is to help you guys come in UNDER Budget!  So hopefully all of these crazy deals that have been posted and will be posted on Freebies2Deals.com can help you get there.  All you have to do is remember to watch the website throughout the day until the deal you want pops up…. and it should over the next 5 weeks!

Make Sure You Have Amazon Prime:

If you have never had a Free 30-Day Trial of Amazon Prime, you need to sign up today.  Don’t wait.  Do it right now. 

Why am I bugging you about this?  Because if you have that FREE 30-Day Trial, you will get FREE 2-Day Shipping on all of your Amazon Purchases!!!  If you start right now, you will have until Dec 14th to grab all of the crazy deals, lightning deals and Black Friday deals that pop up on Amazon.  I’m pretty sure you guys have noticed how many incredible ones there have already been from my posts.  ;)

If you could get crazy deals and get it shipped with FREE 2-Day Shipping, wouldn’t you??  Right now is the perfect time to sign up for your 30-day trial.  I’ve been waiting till now to tell you guys to do it so we could make sure your 30 day window would be perfect for all of the Holiday deals!

Before your 30 days is up, you will want to make sure you cancel your trial, or Amazon will charge you $99 for a full year membership.  (A lot of people actually decide to keep it because the added benefits of Amazon Prime go way beyond just Free 2-day shipping.  I’ve kept mine because of how many shipments/deals I get from Amazon in a year and all of the extra benefits I’ve listed below.)

Other benefits of an Amazon Prime Trial or Membership?

• Free Access to Prime Instant Video: Unlimited streaming of movies and TV episodes
• Prime Music: unlimited, ad-free access to hundreds of Prime Playlists and more than a million songs
• Prime Photos: Secure unlimited photo storage in Amazon Cloud Drive. (BRAND NEW!!)
• Prime Pantry: Access to Prime Pantry, where members can purchase and ship to addresses in the contiguous U.S. low priced grocery, household, and pet care items for a flat delivery fee of $5.99 for each Prime Pantry box.
• Prime Early Access: Get 30-minute early access to select Lightning Deals on Amazon.com and new events on MyHabit.com.
• Kindle Owners’ Lending Library: Free Access
• Kindle First: Early access for members in the U.S. to download a new book for free every month from the Kindle First picks
• Membership Sharing: Prime members may invite up to four eligible household members living at the same address to enjoy the shipping benefits of a free trial or paid Prime membership at no extra cost. If you purchase a Prime membership as a small business, you may invite up to four co-workers to shop with this corporate account.

So make sure you head over right now and sign up for your FREE 30-Day Trial so you can really save this Holiday Season and not have to worry about shipping costs either.  Free 2-day shipping is SO awesome to have!

***For those of you who are College Students: You can actually get a FREE 6 Month Trial of Amazon Prime.  So if you have a .edu email address to verify that you are a student, this option is WAY better!  And your renewal fee is only $49–instead of $99. So all of the college students out there are getting hooked up. 

Use Amazon Lightning Deals like they are Going out of Style:

Heads up!  Amazon has started their Countdown to Black Friday Deals!  That means Lightning Deals are in full swing and I’ve listed info below so you will know which pages to watch.  Lightning Deals will save you so much money… it’s not even funny!!  If you see a deal that is going live later that day, just note the time it starts and be ready to go online a few minutes before.

I have had a lot of you have questions about how the Lightning Deals on Amazon work.  So if you are confused, or have questions, you will want to read this little Lightning Deals Information Page.  It will give you the tips you need to snag the deals you want when they drop to those super low prices!

An Important Change to Note this Year:  Amazon is now giving Amazon Prime Members 30 minute early-access to certain deals. That means that some of those hotter deals might actually be gone before you even get a chance to grab them–IF you aren’t an Amazon Prime member. So how do we get around that??

If you haven’t already, you will want to get signed up for a FREE 30-Day Trial of Amazon Prime! Right now is the perfect time to do this.  By starting now, you could potentially get all of your Holiday shopping done before and during Black Friday Week & Cyber Monday and have it all shipped to you FREE! Since deals have already started (even earlier than last year) it should be pretty easy to get all of your shopping done before your 30 days are up if you start right now.

I would HIGHLY recommend you have these special pages saved as a favorite or as a bookmark. Then you can quickly check throughout the day to see which deals you want to grab:

• MAIN Lightning Deals Page
• Black Friday in Video Games
• Black Friday in Toys and Games(This is one to watch!!!)

Lightning Deals start every hour or every two hours… depending on the category.  Think of them as mini daily deals.  They have an allotted number to sell and the first people to add them to their cart and then checkout within 15 minutes will get them.  If someone adds it to their cart and then doesn’t check out within 15 minutes, anyone who requested to be on the waitlist will get a message from Amazon letting them know they can claim it instead.  **So if you don’t get it, get on the waitlist. You still could!

On top of these great deals, you can get FREE Shipping with Amazon Prime.  You can get Amazon Prime, by signing up for the Free 30-Day Trial of the Amazon Mom Program, or Amazon Student Program.  Or, just pad your order to hit $35 and it will ship free too!

There are lots of other ways to get those Black Friday Deals BEFORE Black Friday… so stay tuned for Part 2!