The Problem
Recently there have been a number of deals that have died in a short amount of time (e.g eBay 20% off everywhere including gift cards & $50 at eBay for only $35 including gift cards). Because these deals died so quickly, a lot of readers missed out on these opportunities, I hate when this happened so rather than moaning about it, I’ve created a solution.
The Solution
We’ll use the following Twitter account to post deals that will die quickly (using our subjective judgement): @dochotdeals. There is a site called If This, Then That which is extremely useful for a variety of different things (we’ll have a dedicated post on this soon). The basic idea is you subject an input, in this case every time @dochotdeals posts a new Tweet and then subject an output, in this case receiving a notification on your cellphone. If you’re familiar with IFTTT, you can find the two receipes below, if you’re not familiar then keep reading:
Setting It Up
If you’re not familiar with IFTTT, don’t worry we’ve done the “hard work” for you. Just follow these instructions:
- Sign up for an IFTTT account
- Add one of the following recipes to your account, dependent on which phone operating system you’re currently using
- Download the IFTTT app to your phone, again depending on your phone’s operating system:
- Log into your account and give it permission to send you notifications
- Voila, you’re finished.
There seems to be a delay of less than thirty seconds, so this should give you the best chance to snag those time limited deals. You can also create similar recipes to do the same thing with our main Twitter account, but as mentioned previously we’ll discuss all of the different possibilities of IFTT soon.
If you don’t have Twitter/Smart phone then you also have two other options.
- Receive an e-mail by using this IFTTT recipe.
- Text follow @dochotdeals” to 40404
Can’t find the IFTTT links, they seem to be missing now.
William Charles is this dead?
It’s not dead, just need to set it up with IFTTT yourself now as they don’t let you share them anymore without paying.
I see what they are saying. The links at the top of tie article lead to a 404 page. The “Android recipe” and
“iOS recipe” specifically.
But if you scroll down further to “Download the IFTTT app to your phone, again depending on your phone’s operating system:
Android
iOS”
Those two links work.
I attempted to replicate the recipe manually but just wanted to make sure I did it right
So basically we are just setting up IFTTT to send push notification if there is a new tweet by @dochotdeals.
is my understanding correct ?
IFTTT asks for way more Twitter permissions than it needs, including access to your Direct Messages. No thanks.
Okay, I didn’t understand this before meaning that I definitely didn’t know how to set up, meaning that I’m definitely not a techie. But I got it now. I’m now set up for those quick die deals. Thanks.
Supposed to say that I didn’t know how to set it up and not “how to set up”.
Always improving – great idea!
Popular post 🙂 Glad you got this going!
Twitter also has text notifications. Just text “follow @dochotdeals” to 40404. I think theres some initial set up to link your phone number to your twitter account, but you only receive texts for twitter accounts you text to follow from your phone. (i.e. you won’t receive a text for every post by every person you follow on twitter)
Thanks, Quinn! Added this into the post as well.
“This SMS Action isn’t available right now”
Hello, for those of us who do not use IFTTT for iPhone or Android, we can still get an email for the deals that doc tweets about!
Use this recipe to activate.
https://ifttt.com/recipes/300536-doctor-of-credit-hot-deals
Thank, Maz! Good idea.
Maz, thanks for the tip. I just added it. Is there any way to confirm that it’s working?
Perfect exactly what I was looking for.
In the Twitter app, there is also a “turn on notifications” feature which sends a push notification every time this user makes a tweet. 🙂 that might save a step!
i dont use twitter but i would assume there is a way to get notification when a specific user posts a tweet. not sure why DOC wants to make it complicated. unless i am missing something….?
in any case thanks so much DOC. i was going to ask you to do something similar exclusively for these hot hot deals.
if you don’t use twitter, you need IFTTT then. use the IFTTT recipe Maz posted below.
it’s not complicated at all, in fact, this is a genius idea 🙂 he can send an email, but most people don’t check their email every second of the day. but they do look at their phones when they light up from a push notification. it’s more instant than email and you can drop whatever you’re doing and jump on the deal.
As usual, you go above and beyond for us readers. Many thanks!
What if i dont have a smartphone?
IFTTT can text or call you at no extra charge (carrier may charge you).