Last year I spent a lot of time explaining Black Friday and how I prepare for it. If you are venturing out on the day after Thanksgiving then here is what you will need to know:

Black Friday Pt. 1 – ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE!!! — In this section I talk about being physically ready to take on BF. This will help you know exactly what you need to be ready for the long wait outside the store and how to attack your primary location.

Black Friday Pt. 2 – It’s All in What You Know — Here I detail all the site that can be of interest and help you get your list of items together.

Black Friday Pt. 3 – ATTACK!! — This post details how I cover multiple stores in one day. I will say a quick change to my rankings. After last year I would move all the office supply stores up to a 3.

Black Friday Pt. 4 – The Lazy Man’s Black Friday — For those who hate shopping ( like my wife) there are other options to take advantage of if you want to sleep in on the greatest shopping day of the year.

On Monday I will be discussing my personal target list for this years Black Friday, but I hope these posts help you get your BF strategy down to a science.

Formulating lists for Black Friday does take some effort.   So it is best to scour the early ads before the big push comes from all the really big BF retailers.  Here are the retailer lists that have shown up so far:

          AAFES                Ace Hardware          Bath and Body Works

Craft Warehouse     Half Price Books          Harbor Freight   

 Sears                   Toys R US                   Walgreens

 Happy Hunting and keep checking back since I will be discussing my personal strategy for this year as BF gets closer.

In reading a large number of the discussions on what we are going to see this Black Friday I have started working up a list of what I expect to see in the Black Friday Sales.  Computers are always a big item for Black Friday and this year is going to be no different.  Here is what I expect to see across the retail world:

Desktop Computer – There will be a moderately equipped PC for $299.  Moderately equipped should include a dual core processor, a large hard drive, DVD burner and a 19″ monitor.  

Laptops – I am looking at three different kinds of laptops; ultra mobile, moderate and well equipped. 

• A well equipped laptop should have 3GB of ram a dual core processor and at least a 15″ screen and should sell for around $399
• A moderately equipped laptop should have 1 or 2GB of ram a dual core processor ans a smaller screen and should sell for around $299
• An Ultra Mobile laptop is going to be much smaller and more portable.  It will have 1GB of ram a single core processor and a 10″ screen or less.  It will be able to fit in a medium to small size purse and will sell for around $199

As I formulate lists of other hot ticket items I will be presenting more of these predictions.   Also, once the sales start to be revealed I will let you know which stores to hit and how I am formulating my Black Friday Strategy.

Yes it is Cyber Monday.   This is the online equivalent of Black Friday.  Almost every retailer has something going on today so get out there and find the best deals on Christmas presents (or whatever holiday you celebrate).  There are not as many options to find deals on Cyber Monday as there are for Black Friday.   The best place I have found is a forum from Gottadeal.com.  There are tons of great links there to some of the best online deals of the season.  Have fun but try not to overspend.

Well I had a reasonably successful Black Friday and yet completely frustrating.  Although I had planned to go to five stores ,I only made it to two because neither one was ready for the onslaught of customers.  I was in Warner Robins, Ga visiting family for Thanksgiving so I went out on Friday morning at 4AM with my brother-in-law.  We went to Circuit City first and he scored a 46 and 32 inch television.  This took so long I had to abandon him there and head to Staples.  At staples I got a GPS,  some PC memory, and a cool pad for my wife’s laptop.  By the time I got out of Staples, which opened at 6AM and picked up my brother-in-law at CC it was 8:30 so we went home and played with our new toys and forgot about the smaller items on my hit list.  Did anyone take a shot at Black Friday and come out ahead?

The title is not trying to steal any thunder from Lazy Man and Money (this is an awesome blog you should check it out), but emphasize how the adoption of online retailing by the larger box stores is making it easier and easier to not have to go out on Black Friday. Now the best door buster deals are not usually available online, but a lot of the good deals will be. Each retailer is different in how they will be handling online sales so you have to research each one. I do know that Wal-Mart and Best Buy will be offering some of their BF sales online.

Now for the person who doesn’t want to bother with Black Friday at all there is a fairly new phenomenon called Cyber-Monday. This is the Monday after Thanksgiving when everyone is dragging back into work. Basically a large number of on-line retailers (Amazon, NewEgg, Buy.com, etc.) use this day as the start to the Holiday Season and begin all their big sales that day. The deals for Cyber-Monday are much harder to hunt down than Black Friday deals. Apparently either the online retailers are able to keep their ads from leaking (no paper) or the monkeys who run the message boards feel some loyalty to their online brethren. So far all I have found is a tidbit here and there and two sites, cybermonday.com and Dealio.com, that are dedicated to providing a list of Cyber-Monday deals but not until the day is actually upon us. Personally I will be doing both looking for good deals on gifts for my family and friends. I hope your shopping experience is grand and that no one gets trampled this year.

Other Black Friday Posts:
Black Friday Pt. 1 — ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE!!
Black Friday Pt. 2 — It is All In What You Know
Black Friday Pt.3 — ATTACK!!

O.K. so you have honed your body, and prepared your information for this great day of shopping. Now you need an A+ strategy for attacking the stores on Black Friday. The first step is decide, what is your have got to have number one item? Once you decide on your top pick you will need to know if there are other things on sale at that store that you want to pick up. However many individual items you want to purchase at the alpha store is how many people you need to take with you to that store. In my personal experience Wal-Mart is a lost cause. Why even put yourself in a place where you could get trampled? I would focus on the next tier Target, Best Buy, Circuit City, and other big box stores.

Now that you have determined your alpha target it is time to determine targets Bravo through golf (that’s 2-7 if you have that many). The way I do this is two fold. I list all the items I want to purchase in one column followed by the store that each item is on sale in the second column. I then rate how busy that store will be. If one item is more important than the others it moves to the top of the list and that store will be visited second. If they are all equal value I then determine the likely hood of that item selling out by how busy that store is likely to be. For example: If I were trying to get a great deal on a thumb drive and it was on sale at Circuit City (a high traffic store) I would go there much earlier in the day than if it were on sale at Staples, because people do not as easily think of Staples as a place to get a great deal on Black Friday. To Help you out here is my list rated from 5 to 1 (5-most traffic, 1-least traffic). This of course depends on if you have these store in your area.

5-Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Toys R Us
4-Circuit City, Comp USA, K Mart, HHGregg,
3-All the department stores (Sears, Macy’s, Etc.), Radio Shack
2-Home Depot, Lowes
1-Staples, Office Depot, Office Max, Ace Hardware, Pep Boys (yes even Pep Boys is in on the fun)

I have decided to add one more post onto this series so check back tomorrow for the conclusion. YES! I will still have some weekend freebies for you.

Other Black Friday Posts:
Black Friday Pt. 1 — ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE!!
Black Friday Pt. 2 — It is All In What You Know

On Black Friday there is a miriad of advertising and tempting deals to lure you in every direction.  The second key to a successful Black Friday shopping experience is knowing what stores you want to hit.  In the old days, before the internet, everyone had to wait until all the ads were released which was usually just a few days before.  You can still use these ads but with the internet now available it gives you much more time to prepare your hit sheet.  Different sites will have different ads available so your best bet is to look for the stores that are in your area on the different sites and then collect data accordingly.  The two sites I like the most are blackfriday.info and black-friday.net.  Both of these sites have pretty good coverage of the major stores and they include the opiton of creating a shopping list by registering with their site.  None of the other sites I have gone through have this option.  Just in case you are interested the other sites are: blackfriday.dealspl.us, dealtaker.com, gottadeal.com, blackfridayads.com, theblackfriday.com, and bfads.net.  All of these are great sites to start forming you list.  Tomorrow I will go over my final step of Black Friday preparation — Strategy.

Black Friday is next week and the hype surrounding it is in full swing. The day got its name for the day when retailers typically make a profit for the year or are “in the black.” As someone who used to work in retail full time I am always amused by the rumblings of what is happening with black friday. The big box stores are always out there threatening to sue people for releasing their Black Friday ads early (especially Wal-Mart), people are going nuts over the next “favorite” toy, and the commission sales people are raking in the dough.

If you are going to venture out and go for the big prizes on Black Friday you must realize that this is not a fun and games shopping experience. It’s more like a blood sport. There are three areas you will need to take into consideration to be successful at Black Friday shopping and the first is physical preparation.

To prepare physically you will need to go to bed early. Please do not try to hit 7 stores in one day with no sleep. You want to know why someone gets trampled every year? Because they fell asleep near the front of the line. If you are going after one of the door buster deals you will be up by at least 3am, if not earlier, trying to get a spot near the front of the line. This means you will need more than just yourself to be out there. That way someone can hold your spot so you can go to the bathroom, or while one of you goes for food. You will need the same number of people as items you are trying secure. So if there are three specific door buster deals you want from Best Buy then you will need two other friends or family that will go get those items while you go for the most important prize. They will not be there if you try to run around the store picking each one up individually. As per the BF rules everyone from your party must start in line together. That way no one can complain about you not having been there from the beginning. For good measure, if one of you goes out for food offer to get something for the person behind you in line. By extending this act of kindness they are not likely to get upset with you for not having everyone stay put. So, now that you have enough sleep and you have enough bodies you are physically ready for BF and can move on to the second area of preparation… information. Which we will talk about tomorrow.

Other Black Friday Posts:
Black Friday Pt. 2 — It is All In What You Know
Black Friday Pt.3 — ATTACK!!
Black Friday Pt.4 — The Lazy Man’s Black Friday