Best Buy & Circuit City 2008 Cyber Monday Sales: Early Retail Specials Beat Out One-Day-Only Deals

Circuit City and Best Buy launched their "Cyber Monday" specials on Sunday morning. So, one more retail industry milestone event is pre-empted by desperate e-tailers that are struggling to survive, and hoping to capture their share of the 2008 holiday shopping season budget.

One Day Only Cyber Monday Sweepstakes and Specials

There are still many e-commerce sites that are honoring the Cyber Monday tradition with one-day only Cyber Monday deals.

J.C. Penney is staging a "$10,000 Cyber Monday Portrait Giveaway." Visitors to the JCPenney portraits site can enter the sweepstakes for nine hours on Cyber Monday. On Wednesday, 100 of the entrants will be randomly drawn and awarded a $100 portrait gift certificate.

After a Black Friday shooting in one of its stores, the executives at Toys 'R Us probably won't mind at all if a whole lot of toy shopping is done online. The Toysrus.com Cyber-Monday-only deals include discount prices up to 60% off. As an extra bonus, you can get an additional 20% cash back when you use PayPal to pay for your Toys 'R Us purchase.

PayPal has partnered with other retailers to provide these e-commerce cash back bonuses, although there is a curious absence of details on the PayPal website or obvious advertising about it.

Kmart has dozens of designated one-day-only specials listed on its website. Featured Cyber Monday sales include discounts on well-known brands like Martha Stewart, Jaclyn Smith, Joe Boxer, Timex, Levi Strauss, Eureka, and Hoover. (Oh please, Santa, bring me a vacuum cleaner for Christmas!)

There are hints that there will also be new cyber specials on Kmart.com each Monday until Christmas. Pulling out all the holiday stops, Kmart.com is also hosting a Hannah Montana Sweepstakes promotion. Apparently Kmart (and its parent company, Sears) is as interested in grabbing the attention of the tween target market as it is in capturing the baby boomers and senior citizens with its revitalized layaway offering.