Unlocking Secret Steals: A Savvy Guide to Monitoring
"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity"
- Albert Einstein
Welcome to our Savvy Monitoring Guide!
This guide is unlike any other you’ll find on tracking car deals.
It uses a strategy that most everyday car buyers never think about, which is exactly why it works so well.
While most people only check listings occasionally or rely on luck to find a deal, this guide shows you how to stay one step ahead by quietly monitoring price drops and key changes.
By using this method, you’ll know the moment a steal becomes a deal—before anyone else even has a clue.
In summary:
👉 Monitoring price drops and changes over time reveals when a dealer is feeling the pressure to sell, giving you insight into when the best deals are about to surface—well before the typical buyer even notices.
👉 Meanwhile, tracking vehicles consistently allows you to strike at the right moment when the price hits its lowest point, giving you an advantage others don’t have.
In essence, this approach isn’t just about saving you money.
It puts you ahead of the game by ensuring you're ready to act the moment the perfect deal presents itself, long before anyone else even realises it’s there.
This method not only empowers you as a buyer but completely transforms the traditional car buying process, ensuring you get access to deals others are likely to miss.
Better still, once you've done this a few times it will become like clockwork and the whole process will literally take you less than a minute to set-up!
Remember, the best deals go to those who come prepared, with both knowledge and timing on their side.
Ready to get started? Let's dive in!...
Monitoring for Beginners...
As you already know, Secret Steals are at the heart of MMC.
We spend most of our time identifying them, however for now, you’ve got to keep an eye on them yourself*.
But don’t worry you don't need to be a tech geek – you can use online tools to do it all for you!
Let’s break it down step by step. I’ll show you everything you need to know.
How Does It Work?
Imagine you’re booking a holiday, and you know the best deals often come when you keep an eye on the prices over time. As others rush to book at the first price they see, you're tracking changes and waiting for the perfect moment to grab a bargain. That's exactly what we’re doing here, but with cars.
Your job?
Use some very clever and simple websites to track those cars and get alerted when the price changes. Easy peasy!
Free Tools You Can Use
There are a bunch of online services that can help you monitor prices, and some of the best ones have free beginner plans (yes, free!).
Now the caveat of course is that there are restrictions in place for the free plans - but most of them will allow between 5-25 monitoring checks/pages a day, albeit the check intervals won't be in minutes they'll be every few hours - which is a great place to start and of course, nothing is stopping you using multiple free services ;)
Here are some services that can do the trick:
• Sken.io
• many, many more
All of these online monitoring services work in a very similar way, but for now, we’ll focus on Visualping because it’s super simple and gets the job done without you needing to be a computer genius.
* We have plans in our roadmap to integrate monitoring into the Clubhouse for Premium members during 2025.
Step 1: Visit Visualping
Go to Visualping.io
It's free to use, and you don’t even need to sign up for a complicated account and can be used on any device, so a PC, Mac, laptop, tablet or mobile phone.
Visualping homepage below...
Step 2: Copy the Dealer’s Page URL (Not Ours!)
When you've identified a Secret Steal you'd like to monitor then we need to copy the URL from the page on the dealer's website. It's important for us to remind you that this is the dealer's URL, not the URL of any associated MMC page that we might send you to!
The URL (that’s just a fancy name for the web address) for the car’s dealer page will look something like this - www.car-dealer.com/used-car12345 - and is the unique page identifier for that specific vehicle.
When you click in the address bar of your browser it will normally select the entire URL (by showing a blue block around the URL), if not simply press CTRL+A (or Command+A if you’re on a Mac). If you're on a mobile device you can simply select the URL text with your fingers.
Important: Ensure that you are selecting the whole URL and are not missing any of the digits!
Now go ahead and copy that URL.
You can copy it by selecting the address in your browser's address bar and pressing CTRL+C (or Command+C if you’re on a Mac).
Example of the URL for a specific car at a dealer below...
Step 3: Set-Up Visualping
Now that you’ve got the URL copied, head back to Visualping.
Paste the URL into the box on Visualping that says “Monitor any webpage” by pressing CTRL+V (or Command+V on Mac).
Click “Go” to continue.
Below you can see the URL now pasted into Visualping...
Once you've clicked the Go button, you'll need to wait a short while for the page to load in the window.
Once completed, you’ll now see a preview of the dealer’s page, which is greyed out with a white box over it.
Below you can see the dealers page loaded in the window of Visualping....
Step 4: Customise Your Settings
Now we're going to do the simple job of setting the monitor!
Here’s what to do next:
Choose what to track: You’ll see an option to select part of the webpage. Pick the area where the price of the car is shown. This tells Visualping to only alert you if the price changes.
Below you can see the price selected in the Visualping window....
Next, Set how often to check: Set Visualping to check the page once a day. Their paid accounts allow checking periods of minutes and hours, which of course would give you the heads-up more quickly but for now everyday is just fine!
Next, Add your email: Enter your email address so Visualping can send you an alert when there’s a price change.
Finally, Optionally, add a name for the monitor: Enter a description that works for you in the Job Description section.
You can ignore all the other settings.
Below you can see the Email & Frequency updated in the Visualping window....
Step 5: Wait for the Magic (and verify your email)
Now click the Start free monitoring button and that’s it!...
Except of course for the email verification so head to your email inbox and verify your email.
Once verified, Visualping will check the car’s page daily.
If the price drops or anything changes, you’ll get an email right away :)
Bonus Tip: Tracking More Cars
You can track more than one car by repeating the process. Just get the URL for each car and set it up on Visualping the same way. You’ll have a whole list of "Secret Steals" being monitored in no time!
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