Black Friday, – the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States – is considered the biggest shopping day of the year. There are many who avoid venturing out into the wilds of the world to face down the lines that wrap around the stores hours before the sales kick off, but there is a breed of brave souls who wait all year for this day.
The smart Black Friday shopper starts planning weeks in advance, and those folks don’t always want to wait for the flyers to show up in their mail, they want all of the information in a convenient location so they can plot and plan at their leisure. Even with Black Friday not arriving until Nov. 29 this year, it’s never too early to start planning.
We’ve gathered up five sites that are essential to this strategy and will hopefully make your Black Friday that much less painful.
BFAds.net
One of the best known sites on the Black Friday circuit, BFAds.net offers numerous tools to break down the deals by stores, deals, providing ad scans and a whole lot more. As more of the ads roll in for the year, the site will also make its own buying guides for the year in different categories that will show you what the truly best deals are.
BlackFriday.com
One of multiple sites claiming it is the “official” site of Black Friday, at least BlackFriday has the domain name to back it up. This site will send you alerts when new ads are posted, show you store hours, let you know which deals are available online and more.
DealNews
While DealNews publishes content all year long, it has a dedicated section each year to help you prepare for Black Friday. It has the usual mixture of ways to filter information, scans of the ads and so on, but it also has a section for predictions on different categories if you want to look into the crystal ball for what may be announced in the coming weeks.
GottaDeal
While we’re not quite sure who has the power to give a site the title of “The Official Black Friday Deals Site,” that is indeed what the banner says on GottaDeal’s Black Friday section. It offers the usual host of features such as ad scans, store information and so on, but it has a handy tool in the form of charts that will let you compare various deals at a glance and will be updated as more information comes out.
TGIBlackFriday
A fairly basic site, TGIBlackFriday has all of the usual ad scans, quick access to stores you care about, a blog roll style update letting you know the latest updates and more.
