The Best Black Friday Deals

Where to Shop on Black Friday

Scoring the best deals requires as much advance planning and intelligence as a successful military campaign. Fortunately, shoppers have their own online tools to spy out their optimal Black Friday shopping strategy.

“Leaked Black Friday ads” have become as traditional as cranberry sauce for the Thanksgiving holiday. Whether they’re really leaked by disgruntled employees of major retailers or quietly released on purpose is debatable. But the formerly super-secret ads that are months in the making now find their way to numerous websites weeks before Black Friday. Many retailers also buy ads on Black Friday “leak” sites.

Brad’s Black Friday http://blackfriday.bradsdeals.com is brought to us by Brad Wilson, who started helping his fellow college students find cheaper textbooks online way back in 2001. Brad’s Deals http://bradsdeals.com soon became the go-to source for bargains, discount programs, and coupons of all kinds. The Black Friday site was created in 2009. In addition to PDF scans of Black Friday ads, bargains are organized by categories such as clothing, TVs, laptops, etc. A directory of stores and their Black Friday hours helps consumers plan their campaigns.

Deal News’ Black Friday http://dealnews.com/black-friday/ is a bit less busy and more structured than Brad’s site. BlackFriday.com http://blackfriday.com was founded in 2006 and has 1.5 million Facebook fans; not bad for a one-day wonder. BFads.net http://bfads.net lists the number of items in each batch of leaked ads it posts. Slick Deal’s Black Friday http://slickdeals.net/blackfriday/ includes discussion boards where users can trade local bargains and compare shopping experiences.

In fact, Black Friday has expanded to include the entire week of Thanksgiving and the following Monday. Retailers, in their anxiety to get into shoppers’ wallets before they’re emptied, increasingly run preemptive specials in the days leading up to Black Friday. These last-minute early-shopper specials are also covered by the Black Friday sites. Most Black Friday sites offer breaking-news alerts via email and mobile apps.

But Wait, There's More!

“Cyber Monday” joined the shopping lexicon in 2005, when online retailers began reporting big spikes in their sales the Monday following Black Friday. Consumers who missed or skipped the Black Friday in-store carnage, or who were shut out on specifically wanted items, turned to the Web. Now Cyber Monday is a tradition as well-organized and marketed as Black Friday. All Black Friday sites also cover Cyber Monday in one way or another.

Commerce on Thanksgiving Day itself remains controversial. Many Black Friday sites host lists of stores that will remain closed on T-day, and many consumers opt to patronize retailers who give their employees the holiday off. Others will appreciate the lists of T-day store opening times.

Black Friday still draws enormous crowds to brick-and-mortar stores; there are even some morbid “death count” sites that keep track of how many shoppers and employees get trampled in the frenzy each year. But more and more consumers are opting out of the in-store insanity to do their heavy shopping online, in comfort and safety. Walmart.com is recognizing this trend by putting 97% of its Black Friday deals online, effective at 3:00 a. m. Eastern Time on Thanksgiving Day.

Will you be amongst the teeming masses at the mall on 11/27? Planning any online Cyber Monday purchases? Or maybe you have another Black Friday deal site to offer. Post your comment or question below...