Online Shopping Tips (Coupons and Deals)

Since this is my first hubpage, I would like to say thanks for stopping by and spending your time to read this article. Let me introduce myself, I am a fresh graduate out of college (sort-of). I specialized in online shopping (frugal shopping). Everything started about 8 years ago when I was trying to promote the products for the company I was working for. I went on forums trying to promote our products and coupons and I just got shut down or banned for self-promoting. I then came up with this brilliant idea (at that time) of posting some of the popular retailers (e.g. Amazon and Best Buy) with a mixture of products and coupons from my company. That's was the time I got hooked on to online shopping. I keep seeing irresistible deals on the forum and that was were it all got started.

Well enough about myself. Let's talk about online shopping. Before I start I like to point out that online shopping has been on a trend as of late setting records year after year. According to venturebeat, Holiday online shopping finished at a record high $35.3 billion dollars. That is a whopping 15% more than the previous year and forecast believe this number will continue to grow.

Online Shopping Tips

Alright, lets admit it. We all have something we really want to purchase online but we don't want to pay retail for it. There's a way around that and that's bargain hunting. Before I make a purchase, I often go to these two sites to make sure I'm getting the best of the best deal. Let's start with Google Product Search (search by model #), this website is very useful in comparing the difference prices from different reputable retailer. They even sort out the tax and shipping cost in addition to the product you're planning to purchase. The second site I go to is dealspl.us. Dealspl.us is bargain hunting site has very useful information with tons of coupons and deals. I often go to their search bar and enter in the product I want and scan through the list to see if there is a better deal on the product I'm interested in purchasing. Unlike a lot of other deal sites, dealspl.us has a separated section of coupons and deals. So for example, you see an awesome deal on a GPS that retails for $150 but on Google Product Search it shows $100 at Amazon.com. I then go to dealspl.us and go click on the coupon tab to their search bar and search "amazon.com" to see and view all the coupons that could possibility lower the price to the GPS even more to make it an incredible deal!

Other Tips

Tax: Believe it or not, tax is crucial part of bargain hunting. Rather it would saving $1 or $10 tax, finding the lowest price is the key to success. One of the best way to avoid paying tax is to do some research. I personally live in California so Amazon.com, Eastbay.com, tigerdirect.com, plus much more will not charge tax for people living in California. So if I was looking to buy something, I would definitely suggest going to tax-free sites so you could save a dollar or $100 on taxes (depending on the amount purchase).

Shipping: Shipping is very similar to tax. You would want to avoid paying for it at all cost. There are tons of deals online on (let's say) an iPad stylus which cost $0.01 and what is the trick here? Well, they charge $4.99 for shipping so your stylus would cost $5.00 instead of the $0.01 consumers believe they are paying for. There are a tons of site that charges free shipping with a minimum purchase like Amazon.com gives out free shipping with purchase of $25 or more. Occasionally, there are other stores who charge shipping with no minimum purchase and again, I would go to dealspl.us to find that information.

Buy and Return: Ok, This is the one thing a lot of people may go against me on but its life and its there for us to take advantage of. Lets admit it, I hate waiting my product to arrive. So what is my solution? Go to Best Buy or wheerever and buy the exact same product you purchased online and you could use it and play around with it until the one in the mail comes in which you could return that to Best Buy or wherever for free. There is however one small problem, you cannot use this method on products with serial numbers.

Return Policy: Let's just say I love shopping at Target. Why? you might ask. Well they have a nice 90 day return policy which lets consumers return their products in new/like new condition in 90 days. I am a big gamer, I love to game but games priced at $60 is just outragious. So I buy the original game at Target for retail (yes, retail price). I then have 90 days to go on dealspl.us or Google Product Search to find a better deal on the video game I have just purchased. In my experience, there are usually $10-$15 price drop to a video game after the first 2-3 months (after all the hype goes away).

Electronics: There is a coupon for EVERYTHING (well almost). The place I like to buy my electronics from is Staples! Staples always has their $25 off your entire purchase of $75 or more. These coupons could be purchased on eBay or ejunkie (<- I use ejunkie). It typically cost between $1 to $3 for the $25 off coupon and this coupon could be used on most things except for laptops, desktops, and tablets.

Thanks for reading my very first Hubpages. I hope you've learned a quite a few neat tricks when it comes to saving money. Please follow me. Thanks!

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