4 Ways To Keep Tabs On Amazon's Daily Deals [Digital Dollar]

One of the best ways I know of to save money is to shop on Amazon.com. Time and time again when I go shopping, Amazon always seems to offer 10-30% off the price of retail store products (not just books) that I typically buy. And on top of regular markdown prices, Amazon also offers daily discounts that can be up to 90% off, or even free.

Though you can always visit the website for these deals, Amazon also provides a few useful features for monitoring and catching discounts that will reduce the amount of time you spend browsing online.

Prices Drop Monitor

Perhaps the latest feature for monitoring Amazon daily deals is Delite Studio's free Price Drop Monitor for both Mac and PC.

You use this application like you would to add products to your Amazon Wishlist. After locating a product on Amazon (such a camera, home appliance, or book) you simply select and drop its URL on to the Prices Drop Monitor icon on your menu bar.

You can be notified via the menu bar icon, Growl, email, or a beeping sound on your computer when the price drops or increases for designated products. You can also set how often you want the application to check for price changes.

You will probably want to enable auto-launch of the application to ensure that the app is running and monitoring items on a daily basis. Prices Drop Monitor runs in the background. The free app allows you to monitor up to 50 products. If you want to monitor more, you will need to purchase an in-app upgrade for $3.99.

The app says that prices displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of the selected product.

Amazon Local

While Amazon is a mega online store, a site called Amazon Local looks to be the only one of its kind that reports discounted products and services at local businesses, national chains, and online merchants. The site unfortunately is limited to the U.S. only.

Usnig Amazon Local you can select to subscribe to one or more cities and receive emails about current deals in those areas.

In addition, you can set preferences for the types of products and services you would like Amazon Local to monitor. The four broad areas include Entertainment and Travel, Health and Beauty, Shopping and Services, and Restaurants, Bars, and Pubs.

Kindle Daily Deal

If you're an avid Kindle user, in addition to the savings you get on Kindle eBooks, you might want to check out the Kindle Daily Deal which offers discounts of up to 100% off.

You can visit the Daily Deal page on the Amazon site itself, but you will probably be better off taking advantage of an email subscription to the daily discounts. Deals are also posted on Amazon's Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Also, each month Amazon releases a collection of 100 Kindle books for $3.99 or less. Deals cover all genres including Literature and Fiction, History, and Kids and Teens. Discounts expire on the last day of each month.

Amazon Gold Box Deals

If you want to monitor Amazon deals on your iPhone, you would probably guess there's an app for that. Amazon Deals pretty much mirrors the daily deals offered on Amazon's Gold Box Deals webpages.

The app shows you discounts on a variety of products, and includes a calendar of discount offers, plus a feature setting reminder alarms for individual deals. You can set up and enable push notifications on your iPhone to receive alerts for various types of deals, including clothing, electronics, groceries, movies, toys, and home improvement items.

For other money saving ideas, check out these other Digital Dollar articles:

So are you a frequent Amazon shopper? Let us know what discounts you take advantage of.