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You want it now, but it’s not in stock? Then Buy It Later can help

by Tris Hussey on April 9th, 2008

One of the cool things demoed at DemoCampVictoria–Success at DemoCampVictoria01–My thoughts from last night–was Joshua McKenty’s Buy it later.  Joshua developed and pushed BountyUp for a long time, but on a whim one night decided to tackle a simple problem: you want to buy something at Amazon and it’s out of stock, why do you do?  Joshua created a simple Firefox/Flock extension that let’s you click a button and have a service tell you when it’s available.  If it is available, but you just want the best price, the Buy It Later will tell you when the price changes.

So let’s walk through it…

First you go to the But It Later home page and click the button to install the extension in Firefox or Flock:

After the standard install, restart reopen procedure, you’ll be asked to put in your email address.  Now if you use Twitter, use that email address.

Now you’re set to go shopping. If you’d like, for example, Darren Rowse’s book, ProBlogger secrets on Amazon you get there and see this page:

Note that little button on the right there?  Can’t see it?  Let me zoom in for you:

You click the button and then get an email to confirm this and that’s it really.  When the item is in stock or the price changes, you’ll be notified via email or Twitter.  That simple.  When you buy the item, the link is through Joshua’s Amazon affiliate id so he earns a commission.  Of course this doesn’t change the price you pay, it just helps fund this cool effort.

Joshua has over 800 accounts already and, yes, he’s making money through Amazon affiliate links.  I have some cool insight into what is coming up for the extension, but I’ll wait until it’s announced then I’ll give you details.

In fact, what is planned is very cool and collaborative and … innovative.

So why buy it now, when you can Buy It Later?

Photo/image credits:

• Joshua McKenty by Tris Hussey
• BuyItLater screenshot from website
• Amazon shopping areas screenshots from Amazon

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POSTED IN: Entrepreneurs, Props to Canadians, Web Services