Being the shopping time of year with Black Friday behind and “Cyber Monday” (who made up that weird name?) today, what about gifts for the people you work with or some other group online or off? Buying everybody a gift can become expensive and make some people with tighter finances the ability to get involved.

A Secret Santa gift exchange allows a group of people to participate in buying one gift for one other person in chosen randomly. This morning I was reminded of the site Elfster.com which helps to automate Secret Santa gift exchanges.

Sign-up is a breeze and Elfster helps by offering a detailed FAQ page with three sections: Organizing an Exchange, General Questions and Tips & Tricks.

You can create multiple gift exchanges and then send email invitations to those who will be participating. The exchange organizer can limit the dollar amount of the gift so that it is affordable for everyone who participates. The exchange organizer also sets a deadline date. This deadline date is used for the Elfster system to randomly select the person in the exchange to buy a gift. The exchange organizer can also define so one person won’t pick another (e.g a husband and wife in a group, and not wanting them to pick each other).

Have a large number of people in your group and emailing each of them would be a hassle? Easy, just send them a link to where they can voluntarily sign up to participate. I’m going to recommend to our VTOR blogging group this coming Friday that we set one of these up and use it for buying virtual gifts up to a recommended limit of L$1,000 (about $3.77 USD). An additional bonus of buying virtual gifts is there is no shipping delays to worry about.

Need to give ideas to others what to buy you and vice versa? Make a wish list, just keep in mind the gift exchange value. Elfster is a handy website for the gift giving time of year.

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