Holiday Deals: Black Friday to Cyber Monday.

So once again, the holiday shopping season is upon us. It almost feels like Black Friday comes sooner every year. Like everyone, I got up early just to see if I can get any great deals, but unlike the die hard folks out there, I did not choose to camp out over night. Unfortunately, that also meant I was out of the running for most of the doorbuster deals and was reduced to the leftover scraps of assorted DVD’s and an 8 inch digital photo frame.

In fact, as many of you may already know, Best Buy handed out special tickets on a first-come, first-serve basis that entitled shoppers to purchase special doorbuster deals like the $229 Toshiba laptop and printer package. Judging from my personal shopping experience, laptops were the holiday shopping favorite this year. Other notables included the now outrageously affordable GPS devices and the PlayStation 2.Flat screen LCD TVs, which were all the rage last year didn’t fare quite as well. There were plenty left in stock and didn’t garner too much attention from shoppers. I can’t wait to see what next year’s hot item will be. My prediction? Blu Ray players.

From a national standpoint sales were up 8.3% from last year according to the research group ShopperTrak RCT. If you’re interested in more nitty gritty details on the economics of this year’s Black Friday sales, there’s a decent write up by BBC news.

Of course, there’s Cyber Monday as well, which has seen steady growth year over year as more and more people are starting to become aware of it. This is further evidenced by the 28% YOY increase in sales on shopping.com during Cyber Monday, _as reported by eBay. Personally, I’m too shopped out from Black Friday to participate in Cyber Monday, but was curious enough to sneak a peak at some websites.

SquareTrade also had a big week as well, thanks to all the added sales spurred on by Black Friday and Cyber Monday. People out there are really starting to see value in SquareTrade warranties – and not just on eBay. People are really getting the fact that SquareTrade warranties are all about quality and being consumer friendly. This is all the more reason for eBay sellers and e-merchants to make sure they’re offering SquareTrade warranties to their customers through SquareTrade’s seller co-marketing program, SquareTrade CarePlus. For those who are already CarePlus members, I’m sure you’ll be very happy with your CarePlus Earnings this holiday season. I bet you can’t wait to withdraw all that money generated by our warranty sales.

On a completely different note, I dropped my iPhone this morning as I was walking to the train station. Fortunately, it still works and nothing was broken. The iPhone came away from the accident like a champion, sporting just a few ugly looking scratches. All I could think of at that moment was thank goodness I have the SquareTrade iPhone warranty. It totally beats having iPhone insurance, and the peace of mind was worth every penny.

- Jimmy Lau,   guest writer