Black Friday is gone, so focus on Mondays

Just when you think the furious pace of Black Friday is over and you can rest, letting the holidays go by with little more shopping, think again.

Last week I described how to save money during the mad rush in stores the day after Thanksgiving. But online retailers are just getting started. Throughout December, there will be additional ways to save money.

Interestingly, most of these days are Mondays, each with a marketing name to help keep them straight. Why Monday? It’s the first day back in the office, or the kids are back in school, so more focused bargain hunting takes place.

The first Monday after Thanksgiving has become known as Cyber Monday, and it’s the official kickoff to the online holiday shopping season. Cyber Monday usually carries forward the frenzy of Black Friday because retailers and consumers are still geared up from those great deals and are fully in shopping mode.

What’s a little different about Cyber Monday is that it is more about shopping than buying. With less than a month until Christmas, ideas for gifts and personal wants abound while people make their lists and check them twice.

This year, I challenge people to act sooner than usual. Why? The deals are not going to be bigger later in the season as in previous years. Retailers have lower inventory levels than last year, and they will take advantage of lower supply and relatively greater demand.

Once Cyber Monday passes, it’s two weeks until Green Monday. My speculation is that the term comes from the fact retailers see lots of “green,“ or money, on that day, two Mondays before Christmas. With less than two weeks until the holiday, more people make online purchases on that Monday than at any other time during the holiday season. As a result, retailers tend to push a few more promotions and try to get people to buy.

Finally, the newest labeled Monday I have heard about in the online retail world is Brown Monday — a reference to shipping items to arrive before Christmas. My guess is that “brown” is based on UPS as a go-to shipper of items purchased online. Typically the regular shipping cut-off for Christmas is approximately three days before the 25th, so the Monday before might be a safe date (it’s still possible to do overnight delivery at a heavy price).

Either way, shoppers should be looking for free shipping offers or taking advantage of either shipping to the store or picking up at a store to save more time and money.

Monday usually isn’t my favorite time of the week, but during the holiday season, it is the day when you will see more promotions, discounts and deals. But this is a year when buying earlier is a smarter approach, because discounts won’t be deeper at the end of the season and items may already be gone.

As soon as an item meets your deal requirements, buy it. As a bargain hunter, you will have to dig a little more, but it will pay off.

“King of Koupons” Kevin Strawbridge is president of DealTaker.com, an online shopping Web site owned by Media General that collects and shares online coupons and deals. E-mail or follow @dealtaker on Twitter.