How to Save Money With Online Deals

Bargain shopping can be a thrill, a necessity, or both! If you're not doing your research online before hitting the stores, or even completing your purchase online, chances are you aren't getting the best deal. These simple steps will help you get the most for your money using easy online resources.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Computer
• Email address for registration
• Credit card if finalizing purchase online

How to Save Money with Online Deals

1. Start by choosing the product you want. Maybe you have something specific in mind, but if you don't, do your research! Check out sites such as consumerreports.org or consumerist.com for great articles on products and services.

2. Compare your prices! Chances are that online retailers are going to have a better price variety than brick-and-mortar merchants. Use sites such as pricegrabber.com and bizrate.com to find the best price.

3. Once you've chosen the site you'll be buying from, check for cash-back options. Many services offer cash-back for surfing to the site you want through their own site (called "affiliate links"). Register at ebates, com, couponcactus.com, or Upromise.com (to name a few) to earn cash back for nearly every purchase.

4. You'd clip a coupon at home, why not take advantage of the same offers online? A simple search engine query for "coupons" will turn up hundreds of thousands of results. Add the name of the retailer you've chosen, and you're likely to find coupons for percentages off or free shipping, making your savings even greater! Retailmenot.com and coupons.com offer some great options.

5. Combine all of your steps and make your purchase. You can now be confident that you've truly found the best deal!

Tips & Warnings

• Coupon searching sometimes takes patience. Add more options to your search to get the results you want (for example, "10 percent off" or "free shipping" will get better results than just "free coupons").
• Compare final pricing before making a deal. Sometimes the initial price of a product is better at one site, but there are no coupons available, whereas it's a bit more somewhere else but there's a substantial coupon.
• Watch your wallet! It's easy to get sucked into online bargaining.

[muet10]

on 11/24/2008 mine is www.BestStoreDeals.info

[peter123]

on 7/11/2008 my favorite site for coupons is http://www.searchalldeals.com