Doing Black Friday the Right Way

The following might be blatant self-promotion. Or it might help you save even more while shopping consciously on Black Friday. I guess, it’s part of both.

Shopping the right way from Giphy

Today is Black Friday. That “holiday” specifically created to celebrate materialism and consumerism. Let’s try to do it the right way:

Only buy what you really need

Don’t buy for buying’s sake. There’s enough trash in the world already. Think about — or even sleep over (but then, Black Friday might be over) — the question of whether you really need it. Frugal and minimalist ideas are good for you. If you have figured out that you really need it, then go for it — after checking if buying second hand is an option, of course. Buying on Black Friday might make sense — if it truly is a good deal.

Don’t fall for alleged deals

The methods are known: raising prices shortly before Black Friday, then lowering them again, and pretending like it’s a huge discount. Or: just skipping the price wiggling altogether and just say it’s the best deal ever. Don’t fall for those. Do some research before you hit that buy button. Use price tracking sites such as camelcamelcamel.com for Amazon — prices fluctuate quite a bit all the time — and check if it really is a good deal. Also, check price comparison sites. I usually use Google Shopping, but there might be better ones (any suggestions?).

Now, let’s get to the self-promotion (how else is one to get some publicity?!): I recently built this browser extension, alify.me, that puts the relevant AliExpress products right on the Amazon website, while you are surfing it. You can save tons for some products when you order straight from China. Savings of 60 or 70% or not uncommon. And often it’s the same products being resold on Amazon anyway. Check out the browser extension for Chrome here, or for Firefox here. It looks like this (without the speech bubble):

Savings of around 90% for “glasses for cats” with alify.me

Doing Black Friday the Right Way was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.