Around the Sun: Blog About Saving Money

Portlander Jon Jacob recently introduced me to his website thriftmapper.com. The site is designed to help people find and map garage sales in and around Portland.

Jon, a self-proclaimed garage sale maniac, created thriftmapper to address his own frustrations about finding sales: “I used to read through 100 or more garage sale listings to find the ones that were not too far away and sounded at all interesting. It was time-consuming and frankly frustrating….I just wanted to know where the big groups of sales were. I found myself wanting an organizing tool.”

On thriftmapper, garage sale seekers can search for sales by area (SE Portland, Vancouver, Tigard, etc.), type of sale (estate sale, multi-family, neighborhood sale, etc.) and date. Thriftmapper then lists all of the sales that meet the criteria and maps their location using Google Maps. Anyone can advertise their sale for free.

Additional features are available for registered users. Registration is free and Jon assures that personal information will never be shared. While anyone can post an ad, only registered users can go back in and edit their ad. Registered users can sign up to receive listings of sales via email and can customize their email updates by location and frequency of delivery. With the “Favorites” feature, users can select sales that interest them. The site stores the listings and displays them on one map.

Thriftmapper also has a blog and forum, where bargain hunters can connect with each other, as well as comment on the site.

I’ve signed up and have taken a look around. Anyone hosting a sale should definitely add thriftmapper to their ad campaign. It’s free and does not require sign-up. While the more advanced search features are rough around the edges, I think thriftmapper is most useful for finding a critical mass of sales quickly. There’s definitely potential for a great resource here, and I’ll be keeping my eye on it.

Thriftmapper can be found here: http://www.thriftmapper.com/