All Things Deal Oriented
Friday, November 20, 2009
Posted by admin on November 11, 2009
The movie Dodgeball was a hilarious portrayal of a game most of us played as kids. I did not know how serious it was for adults until the DealTaker/Media General team took to the court in Richmond- Go team!!
And the trailer for the movie for your viewing pleasure…
“If you can dodge a wrench – you can dodge a ball!!”
Posted by Kstraw on October 9, 2009
DealTaker had its first “leaked” Black Friday ad posted this week (Half Price Books). Here is the press release announcing the start of the 2009 Holiday Shopping Season -
FIRST BLACK FRIDAY AD OF THE YEAR NOW ON DEALTAKER.COM
Premier Coupon & Deal Site Features Most-Anticipated Sales of the Year Well Ahead of Schedule
PLANO, Texas—October 7, 2009—DealTaker.com today announced the official start of the holiday bargain shopping season with the first Black Friday ad now at www.DealTaker.com/blackfriday.html.
“It’s a great day for bargain hunters everywhere,” said Kevin Strawbridge, President of DealTaker.com. “With pent up demand at an all-time high and retailers eager for consumer dollars, sales will abound and organization will be the key to sorting through myriad opportunities. Perusing the ads well ahead of Thanksgiving makes it easier for deal takers to optimize their time and money, and for retailers to ensure traffic to their stores,” Strawbridge said.
There are 50 days before November 27 which could be the biggest shopping day of the year. To prepare, consumers can quickly and easily find the most up-to-date Black Friday deals, coupons and sales at DealTaker.com. The popular site also features a countdown calendar, a handy downloadable Black Friday Organizer ® exclusively available at DealTaker and a searchable list of free shipping codes for consumers who also take advantage of the online deals every day and on Cyber Monday.
Besides sales from nearly 2,000 merchant partners, more than 225,000 DealTaker.com members actively post deals, ads, coupons and offers on DealTaker.com every day, saving consumers millions of dollars over the past 5 years. Historically, members have posted Black Friday ads directly to the Black Friday forums. But some retailers have balked at members trying to help each other. Already, one major retailer has made a pre-emptive strike with a cease-and-desist letter, insisting DealTaker.com police the forums and remove ads that members post.
About DealTaker.com
DealTaker.com is the premier destination for consumers looking to spend less and get more. A free coupon site for members to share and take deals, DealTaker.com makes it easy to save on merchandise and services including food, travel, electronics, home furnishings, jewelry and pet supplies, among others. Founded in Plano, Texas in 2004, DealTaker.com works with more than 1,900 stores, nearly 19,000 followers on Twitter and more than 225,000 deal-sharing members to provide over 8,000 active coupons and deals every day.
# # #
Contact: Jeanine Connolly
214 – 636 – 3900
Posted by Kstraw on September 21, 2009
My son turned three this past week. It was the first time I have ever missed one of my kids’ birthdays (made the first 18 across my three kids) due to work. I wanted to make it special for him, so I turned to DealTaker to find something small and meaningful; and most importantly a good deal 
I have been very pleased with Proflowers ever since I met some of their senior management about 6 years ago when I was with JCPenney. With an amazing business model that delivers top quality products very quickly, I knew they had to have something that would put a smile on a 3 year olds face. I found the “Beary Happy Birthday Box“. It was 7:30 pm PT the night before the birthday, yet I was able to order it and get it shipped for delivery the next day. The excitement and smiles were awesome and I am thankful that Proflowers had a solution for me to make it happen.
Posted by Kstraw on August 22, 2009
For the last 17 weeks I have been walking and training in my beloved “Kstraw” shoes I made on Nike ID about two years ago. They are the the NikeFree 5.0’s. They have been quite comfortable as my walk around shoes and have actually been quite supportive during my walks while training.
However, after consulting with a good colleague at Road Runner Sports in San Diego, she suggested the Men’s Nike Zoom Vomero+ 4. Because of the extra focus on cushioning (which is best for the long walk) and the good look of them, I decided to make those the shoes to wear. Basically, I got the best shoes possible by shopping at RRS online – they provide so much information that the shopping part is easy. Thank you Road Runner.
I can’t wait to get them this week and start breaking them in - Just in time for the Avon Walk September 12-13, 2009.
Posted by admin on August 17, 2009
Over the weekend I reached persoanl highs for number of miles and time walking in one session – 6 miles and 90 minutes respectively. The great thing is that I felt great at the end of ninely minutes and could have pushed on further if not for things I had to do. I feel that when I can get up to 10-11 miles per day the week before the event, I will have plenty of endurance to go the 40 over two days – but will be worn out then.
Thanks to all of you for your support. You can see my daily blog at http://kstrawwalks.wordpress.com and you can donate at http://tk2.us/donate4AvonWalk
I am looking for quantity of people donating first and foremost. The total $$ will be the added benefit!!
Posted by Kstraw on August 12, 2009
DealTaker has always proudly supported charities around the country, most notably charitable groups for breast cancer research and support. Each year we give money in sponsorship related ways to the Komen walks in various cities. In addition to that, we are literally going to jump in feet first and raise money and give by participating in the LA Walk of the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer September 12th and 13th.
I am going to humbly represent DealTaker and our team of dedicated people by walking with the Affiliate Marketers Give Back Team led by Missy Ward. Missy has been a strong supporter of many charitable projects throughout the years and I am honored to have an opportunity to give back along with a great group of people joining us this year (including Melissa Salas of Buy.com).
The walk is one month from today and I will be geared toward training for the 40 mile walk, raising money via the support of the DealTaker community, colleagues and friends, and working to make a difference in an area that affects too many people around the world. I will post updates on the Inside DealTaker blog from time-to-time, as well as keep up with a daily journal on my own blog at KstrawWalks.
Where you can, please join me in support – either through monetary donations via my personal page on the Avon site at -
Kstraw Avon Walk LA September 12-13, 2009
Thanks in advance for your support!!
Posted by Kstraw on May 7, 2009
Bad Economy? Natural Disasters? Cowboy’s practice facility gets flattened by wind? All bad news.
The good news – DealTaker getting more interview time showing people how to save money, time, and aggravation while part of a fun and interesting community of people.
KEYE42 in Austin, Texas invited us to be on their morning show a few weeks back. Bettie Cross, the reporter with whom I had the pleasure of working, was so excited about the savings we had on all the products we showed. We have all four of the segments available on our YouTube channel (along with all the other videos from DealTaker). Here’s one for your immediate viewing pleasure…it is fun to be the good news
Posted by PTerrell on April 10, 2009
Although Mother’s Day is still a few weeks away, DealTaker is beginning to see great deals on Mother’s Day gifts and flowers. Be sure to visit our special Mother’s Day deals page which has an assortment of special offers from top retailers, including ProFlowers, 1-800-Flowers.com, Macys.com, Kohls.com and much more.
You also can find special offers on:
Posted by Kstraw on March 2, 2009
Where has the time gone? Granted I was not with DealTaker when it began back in 2004, but I do remember when it began. Shortly after it’s inception I was working at JCPenney.com managing their affiliate program. In the midst of rebuilding that program and trying to make it as efficient as possible, we had closed it to invitation only. With DealTaker just down to road from the JCP HQ, the founder made a good attempt to get in as an affiliate, but alas they did not meet our minimum threshold for acceptance and I denied them entry. I still defend the action at the time- DealTaker was just not ready yet for Prime Time. However, a few short years later as DealTaker found it’s community (built on seekers of Black Friday Ads) and began to grow, my successor let DealTaker into the program (as have 1,600+ merchants now) and the rest is history.
DealTaker has been blessed to attract such a great and loyal community of users (over 180,000 registered users – amazing) and has found top quality merchants that want to partner to provide great deals and online shopping experiences.
This week, our merchants and community get to come together to celebrate in good, old fashioned birthday party style. Online we are having games and contests and here at the office we are actually inviting our fellow building tenants to have some cake and celebrate. Many thanks to all of our merchants that contributed birthday gifts that our users will get a chance to win. Happy Birthday DealTaker – 5 years down and many, many more to go…
DT - your future awaits you...
Posted by PTerrell on February 12, 2009
It seems very likely that the federal government is finally going to pass this stimulus package….whew (I think)! What is needed is a promo code to go along with all the spending that’s about to occur. Now, indeed, some of the spending will be going to services but there will be a great deal of purchases during this time, including taxpayers that may receive federal assistance to get through these hard economic times. What if consumers used the coveted promo code to save a little more? At DealTaker, we see shoppers saving on average of 30-40%, and sometimes even 75%. Apply this to the spend those tax paying recipients will receive and we’ll see a whole lot more in economic stimulus than the hot air coming out of our politicians.
For instance, and for the sake of this post we’ll use simple math; if $800B is the final stimulus, take 50% of that to be goods. That’s $400B. Apply a 40% off promo code and that amount of buying power and it now goes to $560B for purchases of goods. Yes, the margin contribution for each item may go down right now and business may not have the best financial results from a profitability standpoint but an increase in 40% of sales will move more product through our economic system and give a nice bump in need for production and other related jobs. If we can get through these times using this applied discounting, say perhaps 2 years, we’ll most likely be back on track for growth in personal income as well as JOBS!
Hmmm. Could this really work?
Posted by Kstraw on February 11, 2009
A question we often get from our users and visitors is “Why when I sometimes click on your links and go to an online merchant is the price different than what was listed on DealTaker?”. Based on my ten years of online retail experience I can share a few explanations that might help to answer that question.
Users, retailers and even DealTaker can get/give the wrong information - We work with over 1,500 merchants and are proud to have over 178,000 registered users. Tying that in to almost 1.2MM posts since our inception, I wish we could have 100% accuracy in our information. With our strong content coordinators, they catch most of the discrepancies as they happen, but occasionally one will slip through here or there. Help us out and let us know if you see something that is not quite right.Ultimately, pricing, promotions and offers are usually done and promoted/shared with good intent. Both retailers and consumers create a system of checks and balances to keep everyone on their toes. If you see anything we can do to make sure our data is as accurate as possible, please do not hesitate to use the contact us section of our website and someone will work to make the necessary changes.
Posted by Shane W on February 4, 2009
Recently DealTaker went through a homepage redesign which, by design, was meant to provide advancements in usability for our visitors. I wanted to take a moment to outline the changes and provide some insight into the goals behind each of the major changes.
Our development team needed to re-evaluate what the optimal width of our site should be. Previously the width of our site was set to 720 pixels wide and now our width is set to 960 pixels. This increase provides us with 33% more space to offer our users easier ways to navigate the site.
When we increased the width of our pages we thought about how we could provide better ways to navigate our deals and coupons sections of the site. After discussions we decided we could take advantage of our categorization system to enable users to view smaller portions of our site and find more of the deals they’re interested in more quickly.
A lot of the changes revolving around the hot deals section revolve around programmatic problems from the previous version. In an interest to provide more hot deals on one page we increased the amount to four and in doing so introduced some bugs in the old code. Our development team decided we couldn’t release the code as-is and decided to start from scratch and add an auto-scroll to allow users to view all the hot deals in an updated and more efficient manner.
Finally, we wanted to reduce how long it takes to load our home page. The first step in doing this was to update our main navigation to CSS based buttons from image based buttons. CSS or Cascading Style Sheets allow us to create buttons that look like our old image based buttons but because it does not rely on an image file it reduces how long it takes to load our page. The second measure in reducing page loads was to remove the rounded corners from our content areas. The reason this reduces page loads is because in order to create those rounded corners it takes a table surrounding our content and 8 images. That’s right, 8 images for a little rounded corner. While this doesn’t reduce page load very much, because we used the same images for all of our content boxes, it reduces it enough to matter to someone who is on dial-up.
With all of these changes we are trying to evolve how our site is used by our visitors and plan to continue to improve how our site functions so that we can keep you coming back to find all those great deals and coupons we are committed to providing to you.
Happy shopping from the DealTaker development team!
© 2009, Inside DealTaker
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