End of Three Fitness

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How to Automate Shopping for Garage Gym Equipment

How to Automate Shopping for Garage Gym Equipment

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What is the best way to shop for home gym/garage gym equipment? A garage sale? The internet? Sporting goods store?

Well, I was introduced to an unconventional, yet completely awesome idea at Lifehacker yesterday when my Art of Manliness blog post made it to Lifehacker– I just have to share.

I talk about shopping around and finding good deals, from the common spots mentioned above, in one of the free End of Three Fitness eBooks, “14 Days to Fitness Freedom: The Garage Gym”, but what if I told you there is a better way?

What if I told you that if you implement the super-simple system, laid out in this post, you would be able to find great deals on garage gym equipment with no real effort at all. Seriously, take 10 minutes to try this stuff out, sit back and let the good deals come to you.

Unless you get lucky at a garage sale (very time consuming), your best bet for finding GREAT deals, I mean pennies on the dollar type deals, will be Craigslist. There are just too many people who thought the whole garage gym thing was for them, but then they just didn’t like itprobably because they never found a great community of people like here at End of Three Fitness.

But there are two major problems with craigslisttime & timing.

  • Time – Because you have to spend a lot of time, day after day checking to see what the latest deals are. Then you may stretch your search to surrounding cities, and cities you have friends in. You could spend hours searching for the right deal.
  • Timing – Next, there is the timing issue. Most of us have lives, so we cannot constantly check Craigslist for the latest and greatest deal. So, say the perfect deal came along, but you are the 6th person to contact the seller and the item is already gone or the price has gone upfail.

Where does that leave us? Maybe you get fed up and just decide to purchase your garage gym items for quadruple the priceOr you could join the 21st century.

Let’s talk about IFTTT.

I first introduced IFTTT at Eo3 in my post, “Hacking Your Way to Productivity: Better Human Lesson #47”, where I talk about how to use IFTTT to automate your life and become more productive. I even offered the IFTTT recipe to add any new End of Three Fitness blog post to your Evernote account, check it out here. As you know, at Eo3, we love Evernote.

IFTTT stands for If This Then That, and helps you automate your eWorld, check out there site here if you are unfamiliar or read how it works here

Well, today IFTTT officially becomes the best way to shop for garage gym equipment!

Step 1: Join IFTTT & Use Recipe

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Sign up for an IFTTT account, if you don’t already have one (you should), and go to the recipe at think link: Craigslist Search. Pretty simple, and it’s all free.

Step 2: Search Craigslist

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Now, go to Craigslist and do a search for the item you want. Make sure you are in the right geographical area (duh) and you can even set the price points if you would like. As you can see in the picture, I am in the market for an Airdyne, so that is what I am using.

Once you have done the search, copy the entire URL from Craigslist that is in your browser and proceed to step 3.

Step 3: Let IFTTT work for YOU

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Head back to the recipe at IFTTT and enter the copied URL into the designated space. Rename the email subject line to say in my case, “Airdyne Deals”, and click ‘use recipe’.

BOOM! You’re done, IFTTT is now shopping for you.

Yep, you will get an email anytime your search parameters are met – A.K.A when that perfect deal rolls around that you have been working on, you can get it right away.

Step 4: Repeat

Setup as many alerts for as much gear as you need. Now, you just sit back relax and and wait for the deals to come to you. Granted, there is always the chance of the specific deal you want never coming around, but if you live in a big enough area chances are this will work for you.

Give it time, get what you want for the price you want.

What else can IFTTT do??

I love the Craigslist option, but you can do the same thing for multiple websites with IFTTT. You can also do a ton of cool stuff.

How about a text alert when a certain type of eBay deal roles around?

We’ve talked about using Evernote as a workout journal before. How about automatically post every new End of Three Fit workout into your Evernote Workout journal?

Then, IFTTT can get really crazy, with stuff like: Turn on my coffee maker [Belkin WeMo wi-fi outlet channel] after I have my morning weigh-in [Withings wi-fi scale channel]yea pretty crazy.

This is a great process that can help you save a ton of time. A better human tactic at its finest!

Do you have any cool ideas for shopping around for good deals?

-Jerred