How We Pick Products
Our process for finding deals that are actually deals, and products that are actually good.
Finding candidates
Every product on dealspot starts as a candidate. We find them through a combination of price tracking tools, historical price analysis, community forums, reader tips, and good old-fashioned browsing. We monitor price drops across dozens of categories daily, but a price drop alone doesn't get something on our site.
A $200 pair of headphones marked down to $150 sounds great — until you check the price history and realize they've been $150 for 11 of the last 12 months. That's not a deal. That's a marketing strategy. We check every "discount" against historical pricing data going back at least 90 days. If the sale price is really just the regular price, we move on.
What we evaluate
Once a product passes the pricing check, we look at several factors before recommending it:
- Real discount vs. inflated MSRP. We compare the current price against the product's actual street price over the past 3-6 months, not the manufacturer's suggested retail. Some products have MSRPs that exist purely to make discounts look larger than they are.
- Product quality. We look at build quality, feature set, and how the product stacks up against competitors in its price bracket. A $40 gadget doesn't need to be perfect, but it needs to be good for $40.
- Review sentiment analysis. Star ratings are nearly meaningless on their own. A product with 4.6 stars might have a recurring complaint about durability buried in hundreds of reviews. We read past the average and look for patterns — repeated complaints, common failure points, consistent praise for specific features.
- Return rate signals. High return rates often indicate a gap between marketing and reality. When a product has significantly higher returns than its category average, that's a red flag worth investigating even if the reviews look clean.
- Brand track record. We consider the manufacturer's history with product support, firmware updates, and warranty claims. A great product from a brand that disappears after the sale isn't a great recommendation.
What we skip
Some products never make it past our initial screen, regardless of how good the "deal" looks:
- Suspicious review patterns. If a product gained 2,000 five-star reviews in a single week, or if most positive reviews share the same phrasing, it's out. Review manipulation is rampant on Amazon, and we have zero tolerance for it.
- Perpetual "sales." Products that are always on sale aren't on sale. If an item has been "40% off" for three straight months, we treat the sale price as the real price and evaluate accordingly.
- Known quality issues. If a product has a documented pattern of failures — batteries dying after two months, screens cracking from normal use, firmware bricking units — we won't recommend it no matter how cheap it gets. A broken $20 product is still money wasted.
- Category spam. Some brands list 47 nearly identical product variations to flood search results. We pick the best one or none at all.
Editorial independence
This is the part where most sites say "our recommendations are never influenced by affiliate commissions" and you have to decide whether to believe them. So here's what we can tell you in concrete terms:
We've passed on recommending products with higher affiliate commissions because the product wasn't good enough. We've featured products in categories with lower commission rates because they were genuinely excellent. Our editorial team selects products first, and our business model works around those selections — not the other way around.
We don't accept payment for placement. We don't run sponsored posts. We don't do "brand partnerships" where a company pays to be featured. If a product is on dealspot, it's because we think it's worth buying at the listed price. That's the only criteria.
Keeping things current
Deals are verified daily. Prices change constantly on Amazon — sometimes multiple times per day — and a recommendation at $79 might not be a recommendation at $109. When prices change significantly, we update or remove the listing.
Buying guides are reviewed and updated monthly, or sooner when a major new product launches that changes our recommendations. Every guide includes a "last updated" date so you know how fresh the information is.
If you spot something that's out of date or a price that's changed, you can reach us at editorial@dealspot.fyi. We appreciate the help — keeping up with Amazon's constantly shifting inventory is a team effort.