Black Friday Sale Listings

Black Friday sale listings begin appearing about one month out from Thanksgiving. Whether the leaked sale ads are from the retailers themselves or from third parties is speculation. Either way, seeing the Black Friday sale listings earlier gives you time to prepare for one of the busiest shopping days of the holiday season.

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving and is considered the official start of the holiday shopping season. The term Black Friday evolved from the expectations of retailers that they will go from "in the red" to "in the black," meaning they will turn a profit in the final month of the year. Retailers open their stores earlier, usually around 5 a.m. or earlier, and sometimes hand out tickets for items that are expected to be popular.

• Doorbusters: Typically, doorbuster items are listed on the front of store's Black Friday ads. These items sell in for large discounts. Doorbusters are also referred to as loss leaders because retailers often sell the products below cost to get you to shop at their store.
• Early Bird Specials: Retailers sometimes have sales at certain times on Black Friday. The early bird specials usually run for five to six hours and include items that are great deals, but not items that people rush into the store to buy.
• Two- or Three-Day Sales: Since doorbusters and early bird specials sell out quickly, retailers offer other sales that last through the weekend, giving consumers a fair chance to snatch various deals.

Black Friday sale listings appear in newspapers the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. There are resources on the Internet you can visit to get sneak peeks at the day-after Thanksgiving ads:

• BFADS.net. Bfads considers itself the official Black Friday shopping website. Relaying on outside sources to receive ad information, Bfads posts the sales as soon as they get them. The site creates a list of each item in the ad and provides a scan of the advertisement if available. You can download the scan in PDF format or in a smaller, Zipped PDF format.
• At The Black Friday you can view these ads from many retailers, including nontraditional Black Friday sales stores like Dell Home Online and other online retailers that usually have Cyber Monday sales. The Black Friday website also keeps track of continuing deals they find across the Internet.
• Black Friday Info is also a good source for Black Friday ads. The site is a little easier to navigate because of how it's designed. The site gives you the opportunity to create a shopping listing based on the ads and posts additional coupon scans so you can separate the ads from the coupons.
• A website dedicated to listing deals, GottaDeal breaks down the sales by category so you can easily view all the computer ads as well as any toys that are listed. GottaDeal has a large online community so you can stay updated constantly.

It is helpful to check all the above sites because one site may have an ad a different site doesn't have. A good time to start checking the sites that host Black Friday ads is near the end of October. Once November 1st arrives, don’t be ashamed to check every day!

As soon as ads appear on websites, cease and desist letters often arrive from retailers asking the websites to remove the ads for a couple of reasons. The main reason is the ads may not be the official ads. Items could be switched or prices could fluctuate and the retailer cannot be responsible for unofficial publication of the ad. Second, publishing the ad before it is release violates copyright law and the retailers who don't want the ad on the site typically threaten lawsuits based on this reason.

Use early Black Friday sale listings to prepare your holiday shopping list and plan what lines you'll be waiting in to purchase doorbusters. Pick one store for the doorbusters, another for the early bird specials to get the best deals possible. Most of all, have fun shopping the day after Thanksgiving for those gifts!

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