CheapTweet Blog

Welcome to the first CheapTweet Happy Hour! Every Friday afternoon, Hayes and I will sit down to talk about – on camera – our favorite deals of the week. We’ll post the happy hour videos here on our blog, as well as on our YouTube page. We’ll also post links to the deals we discuss below the video.

So, make yourself a drink and sit down with us for a few minutes as we talk about the week’s best and most interesting deals. It’s Friday, after all. You deserve some time to rest with your feet up. Cheers!

Here are the deals we mentioned in the video. See you next week!

• Hotel deals
  • Ramada, 50% off, deal expires 1/26 for stays through 4/30
  • Marriott, 20-40% off, deal expires 1/24 for stays through 3/21
  • Disney, 40% off hotels and 5-day park passes for the price of a 3-day pass
• NASA space shuttle, more than 30% off
• Amazon’s Daily MP3 deal
• Gym and fitness deals for your New Year’s resolutions
• Big Lots, 20% off printable coupon, good 1/23-1/31

Have you noticed the new categories on CheapTweet?

We’ve added a number of new, more specific categories to help you find exactly the deals you’re looking for. We now have the following categories:

• Fashion & Beauty
  • Apparel
  • Jewelry
  • Shoes
  • Health & Beauty
• Tech
  • TV & Video
  • Computers
  • Video Games
• Home & Family
  • For the Home
  • Baby & Kids
  • Toys & Games
• Food
  • Restaurant & Bar
  • Grocery
• Entertainment & Travel
  • Travel
  • Music, Movies & Books
  • Sports & Outdoor
• Holiday
  • Thanksgiving
  • Black Friday
  • Cyber Monday
  • More coming soon!

It’s that time of year again. The time when kids (and their parents) get ready to head back to school. And this year, it’s a particularly tough time for many families. Belts are tighter, budgets are smaller, and people are trying harder than ever to save money on back to school shopping.

Through the month of August, we’re going to be running a number of special back-to-school promotions and partnering with a lot of great companies to bring you the best and biggest back-to-school savings we can find.

The first of these promotions is with Football Fanatics, one of our CheapTweet Stores. Football Fanatics is running a special back-to-school discount, just for CheapTweet users: get free 3-day shipping on orders over $75.  They have great deals on sports gear, so your kids can go back to school supporting their favorite teams. I love this girls replica Texas jersey, for example. Back to school time does coincide with the start of football season after all, which is especially important here in Texas.

We also have a special Back To School category on CheapTweet, where you can browse through all the school-related deals on our site. There are deals on everything your kids need, from clothing and fashion, to school and office supplies, to backpacks, gifts, sports equipment and much more. If you want the savings delivered straight to you, sign up for an RSS feed of back-to-school deals.

As always, we’ll also be tweeting lots of great deals to help you save money. So make sure you follow us on Twitter and get ready for the best deals we can find on back-t0-school items.

For this week, we picked out some of the most fun and most patriotic deals we could find, in honor of July 4th. Happy Independence Day!

July 4th cupcake onesie for $10 from @BSB_Etsy

Deluxe Uncle Sam costume on sale for 20% off from @NightmareFactor

Patriotic lampwork bracelet on sale for $31 from @sendinglovegems

Red, white and blue jewelry up to 50% off from @aljdesigns

Reusable Kate lunch tote for 40% off with code July40 from @savvysassymoms

For this week’s faves and saves, it’s all about babies. Check out these deals on all kinds of baby-related items.

Custom baby sling for $30 with free shipping from @sugarbugslings

Green tots organic bib is 20% off from @turtleparktots

Handmade baby booties are 15% off from @kraftylady

Diaper cakes are currently 25% off from @diaperchef

Funny onesies, like this chunky monkey onesie, are 10% off from @journey2baby

A recap of the interesting stories and articles we tweeted about this week.

If you’re new to Twitter, you might want to check out these seven informative Twitter Tutorials on YouTube from Mashable.

Get Elastic asks the question: Is free shipping more attractive than a dollar discount?  The answer? Yes, free shipping is more attractive to most shoppers.

Read our inaugural CheapTweet seller interview with Tracy Owens Chasteen (@polishedtwo), a jewelry designer in Austin, TX.

A big list of 30 deal hunters to follow on Twitter from Savings.com. Actually, there are  others added in the comments, so it’s more like 50 deal hunters to follow.

A recap of the interesting stories and articles we tweeted about this week.

Free food: When KFC of Denny’s gives away free food, logic goes out the window from the Chicago Tribune. Reflections on what people will do for free food.

10 resources for finding free and cheap things to do this summer from the Simple Dollar. Suggestions for inexpensive and fun summer activities.

Twitter proves its worth as a killer app for local business from Advertising Age.  A few powerful examples of local businesses using Twitter for promotion and marketing, as well as Twitter tips for local businesses.

Threadless is crowdsourcing Twitter Tees.  Threadless is printing some of Twitter’s best tweets on t-shirts anyone can submit and vote on ideas.

Recommendations for great baby gifts.  A large list – with links – of gift recommendations for babies and expecting parents.

Starting today, we’ll be posting weekly collections of some of the coolest things we’ve found on CheapTweet throughout the week.  These items are our weekly faves and saves.

We’ll start off with a collection of pretty handmade pendants for sale on Etsy. We’ve seen a lot of creative and unique pendants on CheapTweet recently; these are just a few of our favorites. Note: prices and discounts quoted here are current as of this post but definitely subject to change.

Airstream Camper Necklace on sale for $18.50 from @foundonthebeach

Keep Calm and Carry On Pendants for $3.99 each, buy 3 get 1 free, from @popalicious1

I Scream Pendant for $8.00 from @Bisectedbeauty

Pendant Patach Owl Scrabble Tile Pendant for $5.75, buy 2 get 1 free from @bottlecaps

Bumblebee Heart Pendant and Earrings Set for $22.00 (that’s 20% off) from @lindab142

There’s a lot of talk these days about using the web to save money and about a million deals websites to help you do it. So, what exactly makes CheapTweet different?

CheapTweet is a one-of-a-kind, Twitter-based, deals search engine. In short, we have three priorities: unique, social, deals. Let us explain.

Unique - We bring you deals from all kinds of sources. We have thousands of deals you simply cannot find on any other deals site. This includes awesome discounts from the most creative, talented and cool shops online, not just big box stores, like artisans with Etsy and Artfire shops, local businesses, and small stores of all stripes. Of course we have great deals from all the big names, but we also have just as great deals from the little ones. From Etsy to Overstock, from eBay to Amazon, we’ve got them all and we’re the only site that does.

Social - Our deals all come from Twitter. Anyone can contribute a deal to CheapTweet just by tweeting about it. Unlike most deals sites, we’re not just showing you deals from companies who pay us money; absolutely anyone can get on CheapTweet. The most popular deals make it on our front page based on community feedback: by people retweeting deals on Twitter and by visitors voting on deals on CheapTweet. With CheapTweet, you decide what’s best.

Deals - We want to save you money. Period. Times are tough right now, but even when they aren’t, saving money makes life better. We scour Twitter 24/7 with our deal-hunting search engine to find every possible money-saving opportunity we can. This includes coupons, sales, specials, discounts, rebates, free shipping and every other kind of deal you can imagine. We’ve got more than 230,000 deals on the site right now.

The bottom line is we find the coolest money-saving deals on Twitter and let you choose what’s best. It’s not about which retailers or affiliate networks pay us to when someone clicks on a deal; it’s about unearthing the truly unique and useful things in the Twitter community. We don’t do this to make a few cents off every link you click. We do this because we want you to save money and have more financial freedom. We do this because we want every seller out there – the big and the small – to have a shot at making a better life by selling cool stuff online. We hope you’ll join us in this endeavor.

Unique. Social. Deals. That’s CheapTweet.

Jenn & Hayes
CheapTweet

If you’ve got deals to tell people about, then we want those deals on CheapTweet!  It’s really easy to get your deals, sales, specials, discounts and coupons on CheapTweet.com. So easy, in fact, that you don’t have to do anything!  We find deals for our site automatically, so all you need to do is talk about them on Twitter.

First, you need a Twitter account. All our deals come from Twitter, so if you’re not tweeting, then you can’t get a deal on CheapTweet.

Next, just post your deals on Twitter. Our search engine will find them automatically and add them to CheapTweet.com, where visitors can find and vote on your deals. You can tweet deals for your own store or company, a friend’s store, or even just a good deal you find somewhere.

That’s all there is to it! There are a few guidelines, however, that can help you make sure we find your deals.

1. Always include a link. On CheapTweet, we only include deals with a link.  You can link to a store, a specific product, a blog post, a printable coupon, whatever. Just make sure there’s a link.
2. Tell us something specific about your deal. We’re particularly interested in sales, coupons and specials, not your regular low prices. Include some descriptive detail about what the sale or discount is (x% off, free shipping, etc…).
3. Consider using the #cheaptweet hashtag. Just include this hashtag in a tweet you want to be sure we find.  This is optional, but could help us find something we might not otherwise see.
4. Don’t repost the same link over and over. This won’t increase your vote count; in fact, it will hurt your vote count.
5. You don’t need to DM or reply to us with deals. Just post a regular tweet about a deal and we’ll find it.
6. Tell your friends to vote for your deals. You don’t have to log in to vote, so spread the word to all your friends. Use the short link in the Share menu under your deal to post your deal to Twitter. We post the most popular deals (those with the most votes) on our front page.
7. Create a CheapTweet account. Once you have a CheapTweet account, you can track your deals on the site and see what your Twitter friends are up to.

If you follow @cheaptweet on Twitter, we’ll send you a direct message when one of your deals gets on the site.  That way, you’ll always know when we’re posting your deals.  And feel free to send us a message (support@cheaptweet.com) if you tweeted a deal that’s not showing up on the site or if you have any other questions about how to get your deals on CheapTweet.