Holiday Shopping on Amazon.com

Jessica — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 10:55:00 -0600

For the past three years, I have done almost all of my Christmas shopping on Amazon.com. The main reason I try to do all of my Holiday shopping there is to narrow the places I have to look for gifts. If the mall or Froogle or my favorite online boutiques enter into the mix, shopping begins to become stressful and time consuming. Nothing in this post should be earth shattering; instead, this post is a collection of tips for shopping at Amazon.com during the Holiday season.

Here’s what I have learned:

Find out what people want early. Pay attention to what they are into. This is easier said than done. Try to recall the last few conversations you had with the gift recipient. What were they into or excited about?

Draft an initial gift list. I have a simple spreadsheet that I use every year to write down Christmas gift ideas, which is very useful for next year’s gift giving. The spreadsheet has three columns: person, item and item price. Once you have an initial gift list, it is easier to search for deals.

I can’t stress this enough… the earlier, the better! Shoot for ordering everything before Thanksgiving. My theory is that the parcel carriers . They get slamed at Christmas.

My overall attitude toward Amazon.com Holiday Shopping is a little bit at a time. One night I might work on finding a gift for my mother-in-law. The next day I might find a DVD my sister wants. Marathon shopping, whether online or at the mall, is typically exhausting! Avoid it! Find gifts for two people for the next 10 days (starting November 13, 2006) and you have finished Christmas shopping for 20 people before Thanksgiving.

Send presents to a “gift” location. If the Grandparents are hosting Christmas morning, send “Santa Claus” to them. Or one year I knew that a gift wasn’t going to come in before I left town, so I had it shipped to my parents, where I was spending Christmas, so that I would be sure to have the gifts on Christmas.

I used to shop a lot on Amazon.com: Christmas shopping plus school books twice a year. So, I have an Amazon.com credit card. After Christmas I always get a gift certificate back from Amazon.com. If you are an Amazon.com regular, you might want to consider signing up. If you have a problem with credit card use, do yourself a favor and don’t sign up.

In the Pre-gift Lists Amazon.com era, I created a special x-mas wishlist, which I saved gift ideas to. I used the comments field to indicate who the item is for. In the Gift List Amazon.com era that we live in, I try to save the item under the person’s name, but if I am unsure of who will get the list, I will save the item in the special x-mas wishlist.

Magazine subscriptions are very easy to order as gifts on Amazon.com. They are my number one gift recommendation.

On a budget? Try Bargain books or Today’s Deals or Free Gifts and Special Offers.

Need more gift ideas? Looking for a cool gift for your neighbor’s two year old daughter? Find Listmanias of other two year old girls, like this one.

FREE Super Saver Shipping (SSS)

In general, if you are trying to buy things that have free shipping, look for new books, movies and music.

So that all of your potentially SSS items qualify for SSS, make sure to wait until you have decided what you are going to get for everyone before completing your order. Last year I went ahead and ordered most of my presents before Thanksgiving and waited to order the rest until I decided on the last few gifts. I ended up paying shipping on an item that would have qualified for SSS, if the item were ordered with my previous order.

For the kids in my family (nieces and nephews), I try to buy gifts according to a theme every year. Like last year, all of the kids got “chapter books” because they were all doing pre-reading stuff. This year they are getting “role model DVDs” (kid movies I’ve seen where the main character kicks ass – Kiki’s Delivery Service, The Worst Witch (The Movie), which is on YouTube in its entirety). This makes it easy to ensure that those items will qualify for SSS.

If you need an extra item to get free shipping, try getting something for a White Elephant party or for stocking stuffers or both. Search Amazon.com for the following phrase: “eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping”. Or try this guide: So you’d like to… Buy one more thing to get that FREE shipping.

If you are looking for some interesting items with free shipping, here are some ideas:

Amazon.com on Your RSS Reader

If you want to watch the price of some item or group of items, try RSS Stalker. Look for Holiday shopping ideas on a blog, like this one.

Here are some Amazon.com RSS feeds that you can modify for your RSS reader:

Baseball books

Top selling DVDs

Alternate History Books

a.muse: Holiday Shopping on Amazon.com

Holiday Shopping on Amazon.com