Black Friday is just a few days away and that means big money for retailers and sites that knows how to take advantage of it. Whenever I talk about Black Friday to my friends they don’t know what it is. This is because we don’t have a Black Friday in Canada. For those who don’t know, Black Friday is day after US Thanksgiving.
Why Is It Call Black Friday?
The Friday after Thanksgiving is traditionally known as the biggest shopping day of the year (it really isn’t). It’s very much like Canada’s Boxing Day (December 26). People line up for hours on end to get their hands on the great deals. The Black Friday name comes from an accounting term. Black Friday is the day retailers turn a profit, or enter the black. Before this date, it’s presumed that they were operating in the red (losing money). I don’t know about you, but waiting until late November to enter the black is not the kind of business I want to be in!
Making Money from Black Friday
Black Friday is ideally set up for the shopping related sites because everyone is in a buying mood. The most famous Black Friday site is BFAds.net, run by Michael Brim and Dan Silvers. The site post scans of Black Friday newspaper ads from the major retailers like Best Buy and Costco. It’s a place for consumers to check out what the big retailers are offering before the ads hit the newspapers.
Not all retailers are happy having their ads posted on BFAds.net. Some have sent cease-and-desist letter to get their ads pulled from the site. Two years ago, BFAds.net was sued by Office Depot for posting their Black Friday ads under the name “Office Despot” to get around the cease-and-desist letter. The case never made it to court but generated a lot of tier 1 press and made the site even bigger.
BFAds.net makes money by posting Black Friday affiliate deals on the front page and running both Google AdSense and TTZ Media ads. Last November, BFAds served up 55 million page views, and this year, traffic has increased three times. You can take a guess at how much money that is worth. 
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