TechCrunch: RetailMeNot Adds Social Network, where Duncan Riley interviewed Guy King from RetailMeNot.com, talked about turning ReviewMeNot.com into a social network of Shopping Community, and how a 3-employees Melbourne-based start up with no VC funding generated $10 million sales and seven figure profit a year.

Impressive.

Just let you know a little secret — my bargains website has also generated an eight figure turn over over the last 12 months, except you have to do it in the currency of Indonesian Rupiah. Now, where is that TechCrunch report again? Wanna do an interview? :)

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Target is having a 15% Off Store Wide Sale starting from tomorrow (Wednesday 19 March) until Easter Sunday (23 March), where Easter Friday (21 March) all shops will be closed.

It has been quite a while since Target’s last store-wide sale so be sure to catch this opportunity to grab good bargains. Some items are excluded, including:

Gift cards, iTunes, pre-paid mobile and Internet recharge cards, game consoles and iPods.

As they usually don’t run other sales during the percentage-off store-wide sale, it’s a good idea to get those items that don’t usually have discount. Thanks to dansor for posting this on OzBargain — why not jump in and join the discussion?

Yesterday I bought my first item from TopBuy.com.au — a 2GB USB key for merely $8.95, delivered for free, plus a 10% off voucher, thanks to this PayPal deal.

This happens to be TopBuy’s “Steal of the Day” deal, where items get huge discount for 24 hours only (or until sold out), starting from 12PM AEST. It is similar to Zazz or Catch of the Day, except it does not have its own dedicated website but as part of Top Buy.

The Steal of the Day has been posted a few times before on OzBargain and from experience they have lower stock level so they don’t usually last the entire 24 hours. I am also adding it to the sidebar of OzBargain Blog so I can keep track of the latest one-day bargains.

Today’s deal — Lexmark Premium Glossy Paper for $4.50, even cheaper than the same deal last week (although when I click through it says the product no longer exists?!) Update: Looks like they have fixed the SoTD item and it is now showing a digital camera hard case.

Thanks to 18Googol2 for posting this Dell deal, Dell Australia is having a 10% Off Selected Products Happy Hour Sale today at between 1PM and 2PM AEST.

It says “selected products” so I am not really sure what exactly is covered. However from the banner image it shows everything from desktop computer to laptops to LCD display to printers so hopefully a large range of Dell products are covered.

Hopefully Dell website can take the flood of traffic later this afternoon (unlike Jetstar’s :)

AFP: Australian central bank hikes interest rate — Australia’s central bank raised its key interest rate by 25 basis points Tuesday to a fresh 12-year high of 7.25 percent in a bid to curb inflation amid robust economic growth.. Seriously, probably because I did engineering at university (instead of commerce or economics), I still cannot work out how monetary policy pilots the economy. You see, rising interest rate should hopefully make “credit” more expensive to get, thus it should hopefully reduces the disposable income of an average family (big mortgage, heavily debited on credit card), thus it should hopefully cool down the market and reduce inflation.

Obviously, the assumption is that the big spending are on credit. Maybe it is true, but everywhere I go there are always big spenders that are not on any debt (young renters, people who have paid off their mortgage, etc). Anyway. While the latest interest rate rise might be a double blow that puts lots of pressure on struggle families, at least it is a great news for those who saves (especially when ASX is not doing too well either).

One of my favourite section on OzBargain is the Financial Category, where “bargain hunters” all share the latest and best saving schemes (Kevin, we hear ya!) Note — these are not those “make fast money on the Intraweb” schemes but mostly saving accounts offered by various financial institutions in Australia, fine prints checked by OzBargain members!

For example,

• RaboPlus — 7.30% Online Saving Account. One of the highest rate saving account with a nice web interface + “Digipass” their authentication device.

• BankWest — 7.75% Online Saving Account (honeymoon rate for 1 year, 7.25% afterwards). Best rate if you are not yet a BankWest customer. Their online banking interface has got a bit better (although I was having heaps of trouble 2 years ago).

• Members Equity — 7.50% Online Saving Account. Probably the best non-honeymoon rate although I have no experience with them. Definitely a bank to look out for.

Many online savers are also offering term deposit at around 8-8.15% for 6 month, but lower for 12 months. Maybe the interest rate is predicted to drop within a year?

Congratulations to Deals Direct for winning Hitwise‘s Number One Online Department Store for the 6^th time! That is quite an achievement — consider there have been numerous opening of online shops sourcing bargains around the world over the last 2-3 years.

To celebrate this achievement, Deals Direct is now offering 6% off store-wide until 7 March 2008, when you present the coupon code “hitwise6” at chechout.

Looking forward to Deals Direct winning even more awards — does that mean we will have higher discount? :)

AdToll is a relatively new ad brokering/ad serving company, where website publishers can rent out advertising spaces, and advertisers can rent them for a fixed weekly price. I was interested in them because (1) I run websites with advertisement space that I would like to rent out (2) they are Australian based start up, based in Perth Western Australia (go Aussies!). So earlier this week I swapped out a Google AdSense banner for an AdToll banner, and see how it goes…

I have to say that I am very disappointed with AdToll so far. First of all, I let them to decide on the pricing, and AdToll’s auto-pricing engine thinks advertising on OzBargain Blog, with a full graphical 468×60 banner at top right hand corner and all that, should cost advertisers merely 20 cents per week! One single click from AdSense will cost more than that to an advertiser! AdToll will take 25% cut, which means I cannot even afford a Maccas soft serve after renting out the above space for 3 weeks!! Bloody cheap for any Australian business to advertise on OzBargain.

Secondly, after placing the banner for the last 5 days there is still no one signing up. Are we so much into recession that advertisers can’t afford Maccas’ soft serves?

So here we go, here is a chance for you to advertise on OzBargain for even less than 20 cents a week. How about for free?! Dan from AdToll is now giving all new advertisers $20 free credit, so assuming (1) you only advertise on OzBargain and no where else (2) the pricing stays at 20 cents/week (3) I am willing to put up with that price, you could have put your banner ads here for 100 weeks!!

Note — all ads subjected to approval. No dodgy ads, spammy ads, competing ads, etc.

Let’s see how it goes.

UPDATE: To WHOEVER PLACED THE ORDER on the banner — you are a SMART BOY (or GIRL?)!! Happy arbitrage while it last :)

It has been a while since this blog last reported the Daily Deals Catch A Thon, where all the past deals from its sister site Catch of the Day are on sale again, all at once, for one day only (well, usually got extended to 2 days).

Heaps of interesting deals this month. Too bad the one I would like to get is already sold out. Saw this deal at work during lunch time and should have bought it on the spot… Anyway. Some tech/gadget highlights:

• 42 inch Conia 42 inch HD Plasma TV — $799 + delivery. It is not true high definition, if your definition of HD is 1080p. However at 1024×768 it is still pretty good. Bundled with a free DVD/DivX player that normally costs $44.95.

• Laser 2GB MP3 Player — $32.80 + delivery. It looks like an iPod Shuffle, but has a mono LCD display, FM radio and voice recorder. Heaps cheaper as well. The only problem is that it is a “Laser”…

• MP3 Massage Cushion — $29.80 + delivery. I feel I need one, right now! Or $19.95 if you don’t need the MP3 player.

• Wireless flexible keyboard — $24.95 + delivery. I have seen wireless keyboards, and I have seen flexible ones. However I have not seen one that is wireless and flexible. Looks useful just I can’t think of any practical use :)

And much more. Don’t miss out!

Okay. Enough is enough. I have spent 15-30 minutes today fixing up issues that shouldn’t had been there in the first place. Why do people keep on registering an user account on OzBargain, thinking that they are actually registering an account on the merchant’s site?! Ain’t that big OzBargain at the top-left corner obvious enough?! I have been getting requests (6 since this morning) such as this:

• “Hi, I have create an account here but I can’t seem to login <some reward website> with computer generated password?”
  Because you are trying to log into merchant’s website using OzBargain’s username + password!!! Of course that does not work.

• “Hi, I want to take advantage of your 30 day free offer and then pay for 12 month service — but can I pay by cheque?”
  Sure, please send your cheque to OzBargain Media and address to Scott. Oh by the way, which service are you after?

• “Hi, can I add another card for my elderly mother using the same emaul (sic) address?”
  Hmmm. Sure. Cheque please?

• “Sorry please cancel my account and my subscription at OzBargain. I think I registered at the wrong website.”
  At least this guy is cluey AFTER creating an account here

I actually have to reply all these emails from people thinking we are the actual merchant/service provider, and I counted I must have a dozen account cancellation request over the last few days — because they thought they have registered at the merchant’s site! I had it enough…

So for now I am putting up a notice when you Register an account at OzBargain:

It states:

Note that this community does not sell products or services. If you arrived here via search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc) looking for a specific product or deal, Welcome! However you might need to visit the merchant’s actual website for the product or service.

Let’s see whether it is effective. Rant over.

Throughout the year 2007, it was a war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, and the consumers had been put off from buying high definition DVD players because one just do not want to buy the Betamax of the twenty-first century, whatever that is. Then came 2008. On Jan 4 Warner Bros, a supporter of HD-DVD, announced that it will drop HD-DVD in favour of Blu-Ray, and the whole thing just collapsed within two month. By Feb 19, even Toshiba announced its abandonment from HD-DVD, together with Microsoft dropping the HD-DVD support for Xbox 360.

Yes. Blu-Ray won the format war. The very first for Sony?

Then we see a flood of HD-DVD related “bargains” appear on the Internet, and many of them got posted on OzBargain.

• Xbox 360 HD DVD Player — $44 from DVDCrave $47 from dStore

• HD-DVD Movies — there are bargains everywhere

You can pretty much grab a HD DVD player + a couple of great movies for under $100 — something totally unimaginable last year. Now the question is, are they really bargains consider HD-DVD is a dying format?

Yes and no. You don’t get this kind of gadget fire-sale very often, and I am pretty sure those HD-DVDs will be splendours on your 1080p LCD TV. However, this is indeed a dead technology so you probably won’t be able to buy any more HD-DVDs in the future. Moreover, what happen if the player breaks? Then you can’t watch the HD-DVDs that you have purchased unless you start hunting for a working machine on eBay.

And believe it or not, obsolete players are actually expensive on eBay. Search Betamax on eBay reveals many expensive 25-year-old betamax players, and they can fetch that price because someone 25 years ago did not want to follow the trend and bought heaps of videos on Betamax…

Personally I won’t spend a cent on HD-DVD (althugh I voted +1 on all those HD-DVD deals). I don’t even have a proper TV…

Thanks to rhys for posting this deal at OzBargaion, OO.com.au is currently running a free delivery promotion with PayPal until 22^nd of February!

There is a bit of change to the “free delivery” policy — the delivery is only free if the delivery charge is less than $100. In rare case where it costs more than $100 to deliver, you’ll only need to pay the total delivery cost – $100. Pretty fair I guess to prevent abuse where someone buy truck-load of items.

Only works if you pay by PayPal.

I have just saw the new Feedburner stats on the number of subscribers at OzBargain — 1,000!!!

The means for every single day, there are 1,000 individuals checking out the latest deals posted at OzBargain via either an online RSS reader (Google Reader, Bloglines, etc), an offline RSS reader (FeedDemon or Firefox’s own RSS bookmarks), or via email subscription. Here are the break downs:

I know the FeedBurner stats fluctuates quiet a bit so it is very possible we’ll slip back into 3-digits tomorrow so I won’t congratulate myself just yet :) However big thanks for our regular visitors who have helped me improving OzBargain over the last 14 months.

Now, when is OzBargain going to cross the 2,000 subscribers mark? Have a guess :) To speed up the process, in case you have not yet done so, OzBargain provides various subscription options + Twitter integration so you don’t miss out any bargain.

Here is one great offer posted by Jeffreylin today at OzBargain — Dell 24″ LCD monitor $499 delivered. The specific model is Entry E248WFP, which is Dell’s entry level monitor using TN panel. The much-praised UltraSharp 2407WFP is also on sale for $799 with a free 2GB memory key. Deal on E248WFP expires tomorrow (19/02/2008).

Specification on E248WFP:

• 5ms response time
• 160 degree viewing angle
• 400cd/m² brightness
• 1000:1 contrast
• 1920×1200 at 60Hz
• DSub, DVI-D with HDCP

Nice big monitor if you need to have a big desktop space but does not need to work on colour-intensive tasks (photoshopping for example). It should be great for gaming because of its fast response time (and you probably don’t have time to think about whether the 8bit colours are dithered when you are fragging/getting fragged). See the reviews on Dell’s site for pro’s and con’s from actual customers.

There are also discussions at OzBargain on how to bring down the price even further. So far you can use

1. EPP — if your work or school can organise it, and you can usually get 10% discount on monitors.
2. MoneyBackCo — 3% moneyback on Dell products.

Should we expect 27″ or 30″ at this price point in 12 month time?

Deals Direct is moving. Not sure where they are moving to, but that’s always a good excuse to bring up a good bargain! From their latest newsletter:

To continue offering you unbeatable value and to expand our range of new, exciting stock we are moving to a massive new warehouse! Of course, our growth has only been possible through your ongoing support, so we think you should be part of our moving celebrations! We’d rather sell it than move it so we’re offering you free shipping on all products sitewide! This is your chance to save hundreds! Hurry and don’t miss out!

Some conditions:

• PayPal only.
• 17 Feb 2008 only.

And yes it is site-wide — from big furnitures to small memory keys! Thank you JayJay04 for posting this on OzBargain.

Future reality simulation. Date — Tuesday 19 February 2008.

Time — 7:30pm.

Logging onto Jetstar’s website. Well, not really “logging on” as while the text appears 30 seconds after clicking on the bookmark, images do not seem to load. Bugger. Still 30 minutes away from Jetstar’s 1 cent sale, the server is already overloaded.

Time — 8:00pm.

Yes! It is Show Time!!! Except the Jetstar’s site does not want to load. Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, Lynx, Flock — I have tried them all but all I get is a spinning hour-glass (spinning beachball in the case of Safari). Not good. Press [F5] multiple times hoping the god of TCP/IP can have mercy on me to slip my request through.

Time — 9:15pm.

Now I am getting something back. “Server busy”? WTF?! Noooo!!! History has repeated itself!

Time — 11:24pm.

Wait!! I am in. Select the flight — Sydney to Gold Coast return in May. Only awkward hours are available but that’s okay. Click on Pay by Credit Card, ignore all that $3 surcharge per flight messages, enter in my card number, account name, expiry date, etc. Click click click. Next!

Waiting. Firefox returns to spinning hour-glass, and it has been there for 2 minutes…

“Server busy” !@#$#^%!!! Press [F5] again and then try to switch to another Tab telling everyone on OzBargain that I am about to score the tickets.

firefox.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

If you were in the middle of something, the information you were working on might be lost.

Aargghhh!!!!!

That is how I envision what will happen next week when the Jetstar 1c Airfare sale starts. Jetstar’s web server will crash hard as it happens every single time. I won’t even bother. Actually I have already booked my holiday in May with VirginBlue a month ago so there is no need for my to get another ticket through Jetstar.

Anyway. Good luck guys next week if you do decide to give it a try.

UPDATE 19/02/2008 at 8:20pm: As predicted, when I go to Jetstar’s website right now…

Sorry!

Thanks for your search.

Our current sale is proving incredibly popular, and our website is experiencing very high levels of demand right now.

We’re working as hard as we can to help you find the fare you want.

In the meantime please try one of the following, as it may help you find what you’re looking for:

If you’ve arrived here via the 1 Cent Sale JetMail, simply return to the JetMail and click the Book button.

Or

If you’ve arrived here and are not looking for the current sale specials, simply return to Jetstar.com to continue searching for flights.

Thanks for choosing Jetstar!