We live in an era where gadgets make our lives so much easier. In fact, the majority of us rely on our gadgets more than we are willing to admit. I mean, when was the last time you left the house without your phone?
A recent study concluded that people would rather leave their wallet than their phone. That says a lot about how attached we are to the technologies around us. The gadgets themselves are getting better with new iterations released.
Unfortunately, upgrading to the latest and greatest is still a luxury for some. Worry not: there are plenty of deals and special offers to grab, and we are going to discuss how you can find the best ones automatically.
Not a New Concept
Before we get to automating bargain searches and price comparisons, we have to take a closer look at how bots can help you snipe deals. The best example is sneaker sites where bots are being used to get limited edition items at great prices.
The concept is nothing new. Scraping has been around for ages and it is a method used in various markets. The resources we have today, including web proxies and sophisticated, programmable bots simply make scraping easier. Bots can now be programmed to constantly scrape prices from multiple e-commerce sites. They can automatically compare the data to find the best deals.
It’s not only about the publicly available prices either. Bots are becoming smart enough to also find information about coupons, special deals, and even exclusive offers only available to subscribed or logged-in users.
This is advanced price intelligence. It used to be reserved for businesses doing competitor research and research agencies monitoring prices. Today, the same advanced tools and bots are available to everyone.
Sneaker Proxies Changing the Landscape
Pushback from e-commerce sites – and even the brands themselves – is not surprising. Ecommerce sites have been taking active measures to limit actions from same IP address. However, those active measures are thwarted by smart proxy networks.
If you are familiar with the term sneaker proxies, you are familiar with smart proxy networks. Smart proxy networks are pools of residential IP addresses. They are borrowed from smart devices in homes as well as IoT devices in offices and other areas.
Rather than using a dedicated proxy server with a handful of IP addresses, proxy service providers can now offer access to millions of rotating residential IPs. You can keep scraping pricing data from multiple e-commerce sites from different IP addresses.
There is a definite advantage to using sneakers proxies or residential proxy pools. You can keep comparing prices without worrying about being banned from the e-commerce site or exposing your real IP address in the process.
When it is time to make a purchase, you can also get the best deal immediately with an automatic checkout. This is what sneakerheads have been doing with their targeted campaigns. Resellers are making big money on limited edition sneakers and other specialty items this way.
Using Price Intelligence
So, are you interested in using price intelligence and bots to discover the best gadget deals? It doesn’t take much to set up a web scraping operation with automation and advanced features. The tools are readily available, and you can sign up for a smart proxy service from a reliable provider in just a few clicks.
Once you have the tool and the proxies set up, you can start configuring the kind of price data you want to collect from the World Wide Web. You can target specific gadgets, configure the bots to find the biggest discounts, or even optimize your web scraping to find reseller opportunities.
The possibilities are endless. It is even possible to set up automatic buying or configure instant alerts whenever bots discover specific criteria you have set up (i.e. a 50% price drop on a particular gadget).
At that point, you can take price intelligence a step further by racking price trends across the market. You can see how gadget prices fluctuate around special days or in general. When I first started doing price intelligence, I found out that Wednesday was the best day to buy new gadgets.
It will not be long before you start finding great deals on the gadgets that you want. With price intelligence and bots helping you spot the best deals, you can still have the best gadgets to make your life easier, but without spending a fortune to get them. You also have the opportunity to make money from reselling the gadgets for a slight margin. What’s not to love about that?