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Shop­ping online has made most of our lives and our pur­chas­es eas­i­er. It is con­ve­nient and sim­ple, and it def­i­nite­ly saves us time. It can also save you mon­ey. Yes, that’s right, the inter­net is a great place to pur­chase prod­ucts while keep­ing some of your mon­ey in your pocket. You can do this by tak­ing advan­tage of web­sites, apps, brows­er exten­sions, coupons and oth­er handy tricks, all of which can be accessed through your phone or computer. Read on to find out how you can save mon­ey while shop­ping online!

Websites

Mon­ey can be saved by using a num­ber of web­sites, such as eBates, Lemoney and Swag­bucks. eBates is prob­a­bly the most pop­u­lar, and it oper­ates in the fol­low­ing way. Clients open an account with eBates and go through this account to pur­chase items on oth­er web­sites or online stores, even Ama­zon and eBay. eBates then give you the cash­back from your purchase.

How much?

This depends on the store and the pur­chase, but dis­counts can be as high as 40% and even high­er on deal days. Once the pur­chase is made, the dis­count will be sent to you through a method of your choice; this could be via Pay­Pal, bank account or cheque. Less­er known sites such as Lemoney and Swag­bucks may pro­vide cash­back on prod­ucts and ven­dors that eBates does not work with, so they are worth check­ing out. An advan­tage of using web­sites such as these is that you can receive cash­back on items you were plan­ning to buy any­way. That way, you end up with more mon­ey back in your pocket.

Beware!

Don’t for­get the impor­tance of online secu­ri­ty. Be care­ful, espe­cial­ly when enter­ing your per­son­al infor­ma­tion on a web­site, because not all web­sites are safe. With this in mind, it might be worth remem­ber­ing the adage; if it looks too good to be true, it is too good to be true.

Coupons

online shopping l save money shopping online l shopping online l best online shopping l best online shopping sites Coupons are a tra­di­tion­al and effec­tive method of sav­ing mon­ey. Coupons can be used to save mon­ey on every­day items like gro­ceries, and are offered at major super­mar­ket stores and shops where you are most like­ly to do the major­i­ty of your shop­ping, even if you do that shop­ping online.

Stay alert!

Coupons chop and change. They will pro­vide dis­counts on many items but often for only a short time, so you need to mon­i­tor sites such as coupon.com, savings.com, slickdeals.com, retailmenot.com, mymove.com and redplum.com, to find which items are being dis­count­ed at any giv­en time. With a lit­tle dili­gence, how­ev­er, you should be able to save mon­ey every time you do the gro­cery shop, and even when you buy less fre­quent items and treat yourself. If you plan ahead and keep your eyes open, you may even be able to use coupons to save mon­ey on items like birth­day gifts or pur­chas­es for oth­er spe­cial occa­sions through­out the year. Coupons can be print­ed in paper form, or can be car­ried in your phone, which helps to reduce the impact on the envi­ron­ment, and saves you from hav­ing to remem­ber loose slips of paper when you are shopping.

Entertain yourself

Every­one likes to be enter­tained, and every­one likes to save mon­ey. Now you can do both. A site such as Stub­hub can find you dis­counts on tick­ets to the the­atre, sport­ing events and con­certs, and it is known to source cheap­er tick­ets than tra­di­tion­al sites such as Ticketmaster. Stub­hub oper­ates by using your loca­tion and send­ing you infor­ma­tion on events that are hap­pen­ing near you, before inform­ing you of the pos­si­ble sav­ings on the tick­et price to each event. Again, prices will vary great­ly, so mon­i­tor the site to find the deal that’s best for you. Oth­er sites which can snag you a dis­count on enter­tain­ment include Goldstar.com Of course, all of this mon­ey can be saved by swip­ing through your phone, it’s that easy.

Use a browser extension

Hon­ey is a brows­er exten­sion that acts as a data­base to mon­i­tor hun­dreds of dis­counts and pro­mo­tions that are being offered in many dif­fer­ent stores. The exten­sion can apply the dis­count or the pro­mo code when you reach the check­out to pay for a par­tic­u­lar item. While some of the pro­mo codes applied by joinhoney.com may be out of date, it has access to so many that you can nor­mal­ly find one that is applic­a­ble. Anoth­er poten­tial issue with joinhoney.com is that it does­n’t always con­sid­er the price of an item list­ed on Ama­zon Prime, so even if Hon­ey tells you it has found the best price that may not be true. How­ev­er, you can always check on Ama­zon Prime your­self and choose a site that is cheaper. Camelizer.com is anoth­er sim­i­lar site. It is con­nect­ed to the site CamelCamelCamel.com and it tracks the price of items on Ama­zon. You can even ask for alerts from this exten­sion to inform you when an item has dropped below a cer­tain price. Oth­er sites that pro­vide the same type of ser­vice include Pouch.com, TopCashBack.com and Quidco.com.

Stay in the loop

online shopping l save money shopping online l shopping online l best online shopping l best online shopping sites If you’d like to know when dis­counts are avail­able and would like to be offered dis­counts direct­ly from a ven­dor, then sign up for their newslet­ter. Yes, your inbox may over­flow and you may have to sift through it from time to time to clear out mes­sages, but among those mes­sages will be some gen­uine dis­counts from the retail­ers, so it may be worth it. Some savvy shop­pers use mul­ti­ple email address­es for newslet­ters. They receive the same pro­mo code from the same ven­dor, through dif­fer­ent email accounts, so instead of get­ting a dis­count off just one pur­chase, they can get a dis­count on mul­ti­ple items. Clever!

Don’t hate Mondays

We all have a thing about Mon­days. The week­end is over, the alarm bell rings and it’s back to work. How­ev­er, Mon­days don’t have to be a source of dread. You can save mon­ey on Mondays. That’s right!! Shop­ping on Mon­days can save you mon­ey because prices are often low­er. Stud­ies indi­cat­ed that the same items were usu­al­ly cheap­er ear­ly in the week. It is thought that retail­ers keep prices high­er towards the week­end when more peo­ple are like­ly to be shopping. So, if you beat the crowds, and indulge in a bit of retail ther­a­py to beat Mon­dayi­tis, you could save mon­ey. The study, con­duct­ed by Idealo.com, found that this was true for items diverse as car seats, sun­glass­es, lawn­mow­ers, run­ning shoes and trampolines.

Straight to the source

Shop­ping direct­ly with the ven­dor can also secure a dis­count. When ven­dors use mar­ket­place sites, such as Etsy.com and notonthehighstreet.com, they pay com­mis­sion to appear on the site, and that cost may be passed on to the con­sumer. How­ev­er, if you can locate the ven­dor direct­ly, you may be able to find a low­er price on the same item.

Get chatting

You can find a dis­count through a web­site’s live chat. Yes, that’s right. Some com­pa­nies will offer dis­counts through this source. Hop on, test your bar­gain­ing skills and see how you go – you might save your­self some cash. In gen­er­al, hag­gling might seem like a lost art in the age of machines and auto­mat­ed shop­ping, but being able to bar­gain is still an advan­tage because, in the end, com­pa­nies want your business.

Take that back

We often return items we pur­chase online, for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. We get our mon­ey back, but don’t always receive the deliv­ery costs in the refund. You are enti­tled to a refund of the deliv­ery costs in some cas­es, so check if this applies to your refund.

Hit the road, or the air

Do you love to trav­el? Do you like to find great val­ue hotels, flights or car rentals? You can do this with web­sites such as TravelPirates.com and Skyscanner.com Trav­elPi­rates has a web­site and an app which locates deals on flights, hotels, car rental and trav­el pack­ages. The site locates the best deals from across the web and sends out a dai­ly noti­fi­ca­tion of the best deals. It also allows you to enter the details for exact­ly which ser­vice you require, and the loca­tion, and it will locate the best deal for you and direct you to the rel­e­vant web­site where you can make your booking. Skyscanner.com is famous for uncov­er­ing very cheap flight deals and sav­ing you mon­ey. It scans more than 1200 sites to unearth the cheap­est pos­si­ble deal.

Be adventurous!

Feel­ing adven­tur­ous. Want to add some excite­ment to your life? Try the Skyscanner.com’ explore’ option. This option shows you the cheap­est flight near your present loca­tion. Who knows where you’ll end up.

Lastly!

The inter­net is more than a good place to shop with con­ve­nience, it can also help you to save mon­ey every time you shop. So, do some research, stay alert and plan ahead. Uti­lize coupons, dis­counts and cash­back web­sites and apps. Do some bar­gain­ing and use a brows­er exten­sion, as well as try­ing oth­er use­ful tricks to help find what you need, at a very low price!

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